Not, indeed, quite as in bygone times is this festival of Hallowe’en now observed. The witches no longer, as in days of yore, are believed to hold their revels then upon the green-sward, and something of the ancient superstition which otherwise lent awe to the eve of All Saints’ Day has been dispelled by modern education. But enough remains of uncanny feeling to lend interest to the more mysterious proceedings of the night; and the spirit of simple enjoyment may be trusted to keep alive for its own sake most of the mirth-giving functions of the feast. An institution which took its origin probably from some strange rite of far-back pagan times, which has managed to survive countless changes of thought, and, like a rolling snowball, to incorporate in itself traces of the Crusades, of the mediæval church mysteries or miracle plays, and of later witchcraft and elfin superstitions, must have a strong hold somewhere upon human nature, and is not likely to disappear quite at once even before the blast of the steam-engine and the roll of the printing-press.
If one wishes to know how lads and lasses spent their Hallowe’en in Ayrshire a hundred years ago, he has but to read the famous description of the occasion written by the glowing peasant-pen of Burns; and cold indeed must be his imagination if he does not catch from that description something of the frolic spirit of the night. In these lines he may hear the timid lasses “skirl” as their sweethearts surprise them pulling the fateful corn-stalks; he may watch Jamie Fleck secretly sowing his handful of hemp-seed, and waiting for the image of his destined true-love to appear behind him in the act of harrowing it; he may see Meg in the empty barn, winnowing her “wechts o’ naething,” and likewise waiting for her true-love’s presentment; and he may laugh at the mishap befalling the wanton widow as she dips her left sleeve in the rivulet at the meeting of three lairds’ lands. But one must not think that these time-honoured rites are all unpractised now.
Let him step into some great farm-kitchen of the Lothians, with its red fire roaring up the chimney, its plate-racks gleaming on the walls, and dressers, tables, and chairs clean as scrubbing can make them, and he will find in practice bits of traditional folklore and traits of human nature equally worthy of the poet’s pen.