In the northern part of Wales it used to be customary for every family to make a great bonfire called Coel Coeth on Hallowe’en.  The fire was kindled on the most conspicuous spot near the house; and when it had nearly gone out everyone threw into the ashes a white stone, which he had first marked.  Then having said their prayers round the fire, they went to bed.  Next morning, as soon as they were up, they came to search out the stones, and if any one of them was found to be missing, they had a notion that the person who threw it would die before he saw another Hallowe’en.[614] A writer on Wales at the beginning of the nineteenth century says that “the autumnal fire is still kindled in North Wales, being on the eve of the first day of November, and is attended by many ceremonies; such as running through the fire and smoke, each casting a stone into the fire, and all running off at the conclusion to escape from the black short-tailed sow; then supping upon parsnips, nuts, and apples; catching up an apple suspended by a string with the mouth alone, and the same by an apple in a tub of water:  each throwing a nut into the fire; and those that burn bright, betoken prosperity to the owners through the following year, but those that burn black and crackle, denote misfortune.  On the following morning the stones are searched for in the fire, and if any be missing, they betide ill to those who threw them in."[615] According to Sir John Rhys, the habit of celebrating Hallowe’en by lighting bonfires on the hills is perhaps not yet extinct in Wales, and men still living can remember how the people who assisted at the bonfires would wait till the last spark was out and then would suddenly take to their heels, shouting at the top of their voices, “The cropped black sow seize the hindmost!” The saying, as Sir John Rhys justly remarks, implies that originally one of the company became a victim in dead earnest.  Down to the present time the saying is current in Carnarvonshire, where allusions to the cutty black sow are still occasionally made to frighten children.[616] We can now understand why in Lower Brittany every person throws a pebble into the midsummer bonfire.[617] Doubtless there, as in Wales and the Highlands of Scotland,[618] omens of life and death have at one time or other been drawn from the position and state of the pebbles on the morning of All Saints’ Day.  The custom, thus found among three separate branches of the Celtic stock, probably dates from a period before their dispersion, or at least from a time when alien races had not yet driven home the wedges of separation between them.

[Divination as to love and marriage at Hallowe’en in Wales.]