the steading, was chosen for the fire, and the proceedings were much the same as at the village bonfire.  The lads of one farm, when their own fire was burned down and the ashes scattered, sometimes went to a neighbouring fire and helped to kick the ashes about.[595] Referring to this part of Scotland, a writer at the end of the eighteenth century observes that “the Hallow-even fire, another relict of druidism, was kindled in Buchan.  Various magic ceremonies were then celebrated to counteract the influence of witches and demons, and to prognosticate to the young their success or disappointment in the matrimonial lottery.  These being devoutly finished, the hallow fire was kindled, and guarded by the male part of the family.  Societies were formed, either by pique or humour, to scatter certain fires, and the attack and defence were often conducted with art and with fury."[596] Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century “the Braemar Highlanders made the circuit of their fields with lighted torches at Hallowe’en to ensure their fertility in the coming year.  At that date the custom was as follows:  Every member of the family (in those days households were larger than they are now) was provided with a bundle of fir ‘can’les’ with which to go the round.  The father and mother stood at the hearth and lit the splints in the peat fire, which they passed to the children and servants, who trooped out one after the other, and proceeded to tread the bounds of their little property, going slowly round at equal distances apart, and invariably with the sun.  To go ‘withershins’ seems to have been reserved for cursing and excommunication.  When the fields had thus been circumambulated the remaining spills were thrown together in a heap and allowed to burn out."[597]

[Divination at Hallow-e’en in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland; the stolen kail; sowing hemp seed; the winnowing basket; the wet shirt; the thrown shoe.]

In the Highlands of Scotland, as the evening of Hallowe’en wore on, young people gathered in one of the houses and resorted to an almost endless variety of games, or rather forms of divination, for the purpose of ascertaining the future fate of each member of the company.  Were they to marry or remain single, was the marriage to take place that year or never, who was to be married first, what sort of husband or wife she or he was to get, the name, the trade, the colour of the hair, the amount of property of the future spouse—­these were questions that were eagerly canvassed and the answers to them furnished never-failing entertainment.[598] Nor were these modes of divination at Hallowe’en confined to the Highlands, where the bonfires were kindled; they were practised with equal faith and in practically the same forms in the Lowlands, as we learn, for example, from Burns’s poem Hallowe’en, which describes the auguries drawn from a variety of omens by the Ayrshire peasantry.  These Lowlanders of Saxon descent may well have inherited the rites from