After supper the tests were tried. In the last century nut-shells were burned. The best-known nut test is made as follows: three nuts are named for a girl and two sweethearts. If one burns steadily with the girl's nut, that lover is faithful to her, but if either hers or one of the other nuts starts away, there will be no happy friendship between them.
Apples are snapped from the end of a stick hung parallel to the floor by a twisted cord which whirls the stick rapidly when it is let go. Care has to be taken not to bite the candle burning on the other end. Sometimes this test is made easier by dropping the apples into a tub of water and diving for them, or piercing them with a fork dropped straight down.
Green herbs called "livelong" were plucked by the children and hung up on Midsummer Eve. If a plant was found to be still green on Hallowe'en, the one who had hung it up would prosper for the year, but if it had turned yellow or had died, the child would also die.
Hemp-seed is sown across three furrows, the sower repeating: "Hemp-seed, I saw thee, hemp-seed, I saw thee; and her that is to be my true love, come after me and draw thee." On looking back over his shoulder he will see the apparition of his future wife in the act of gathering hemp.
Seven cabbage stalks were named for any seven of the company, then pulled up, and the guests asked to come out, and "see their sowls."
"One, two, three, and up to seven;
If all are white, all go to heaven;
If one is black as Murtagh's evil,
He'll soon be screechin' wi' the devil."
Red Mike "was a queer one from his birth, an' no wonder, for he first saw the light atween dusk an' dark o' a Hallowe'en Eve." When the cabbage test was tried at a party where Mike was present, six stalks were found to be white, but Mike's was "all black an' fowl wi' worms an' slugs, an' wi' a real bad smell ahint it." Angered at the ridicule he received, he cried: "I've the gift o' the night, I have, an' on this day my curse can blast whatever I choose." At that the priest showed Mike a crucifix, and he ran away howling, and disappeared through a bog into the ground.
Sharp: Threefold Chronicle.
Twelve of the party may learn their future, if one gets a clod of earth from the churchyard sets up twelve candles in it, lights and names them. The fortune of each will be like that of the candle-light named for him,—steady, wavering, or soon in darkness.
A ball of blue yarn was thrown out of the window by a girl who held fast to the end. She wound it over on her hand from left to right, saying the Creed backwards. When she had nearly finished, she expected the yarn would be held. She must ask "Who holds?" and the wind would sigh her sweetheart's name in at the window.