To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art.
Goldsmith.
HALLOWE’EN.
Ye powers of darkness and of hell,
Propitious to the magic spell,
Who rule in silence o’er the night,
Be present now.
Frances.
Of the whole series of annual festivals, Hallowe’en forms the most important occasion in the Highlands of Scotland. The fascinating round of varied enjoyments the night presents to the young and juvenile—the delightful peeps into futurity it affords to the enchanted lover—and the fond recollections it revives in old age—all conspire to render its approach more interesting, and its celebration more joyful, than any other occasion within the compass of the year. Nor is the happy influence diffused by Hallowe’en confined to the human class of the inhabitants of the Highlands alone; most of the supernatural inhabitants are in some degree partakers in the general happiness. With the fairy community, in particular, it is an occasion of peculiar grandeur, as the great anniversary on which they are reviewed by Auld Nick, their nominal chief potentate, in person; whilst many others of the classes treated of in the foregoing pages regard it as a night of no ordinary pomp and joviality.