come up from the depth of the kiln.  Another way was to take a rake, go to a rick and walk round it nine times, saying, “I rake this rick in the devil’s name.”  At the ninth time the wraith of your destined partner for life would come and take the rake out of your hand.  Once more, before the company separated for the night, they would rake the ashes smooth on the hearth, and search them next morning for tracks, from which they judged whether anybody should come to the house, or leave it, or die in it before another year was out.[622] In County Roscommon, which borders on County Leitrim, a cake is made in nearly every house on Hallowe’en, and a ring, a coin, a sloe, and a chip of wood are put into it.  Whoever gets the coin will be rich; whoever gets the ring will be married first; whoever gets the chip of wood, which stands for a coffin, will die first; and whoever gets the sloe will live longest, because the fairies blight the sloes in the hedges on Hallowe’en, so that the sloe in the cake will be the last of the year.  Again, on the same mystic evening girls take nine grains of oats in their mouths, and going out without speaking walk about till they hear a man’s name pronounced; it will be the name of their future husband.  In County Roscommon, too, on Hallowe’en there is the usual dipping in water for apples or sixpences, and the usual bites at a revolving apple and tallow candle.[623]

[Hallowe’en fires in the Isle of Man; divination at Hallowe’en in the Isle of Man.]

In the Isle of Man also, another Celtic country, Hallow-e’en was celebrated down to modern times by the kindling of fires, accompanied with all the usual ceremonies designed to prevent the baneful influence of fairies and witches.  Bands of young men perambulated the island by night, and at the door of every dwelling-house they struck up a Manx rhyme, beginning

“Noght oie howney hop-dy-naw,”

that is to say, “This is Hollantide Eve.”  For Hollantide is the Manx way of expressing the old English All hallowen tide, that is, All Saints’ Day, the first of November.  But as the people reckon this festival according to the Old Style, Hollantide in the Isle of Man is our twelfth of November.  The native Manx name for the day is Sauin or Laa Houney.  Potatoes, parsnips and fish, pounded up together and mixed with butter, formed the proper evening meal (mrastyr) on Hallowe’en in the Isle of Man.[624] Here, too, as in Scotland forms of divination are practised by some people on this important evening.  For example, the housewife fills a thimble full of salt for each member of the family and each guest; the contents of the thimblefuls are emptied out in as many neat little piles on a plate, and left there over night.  Next morning the piles are examined, and if any of them has fallen down, he or she whom it represents will die within the year.  Again, the women carefully sweep out the ashes from under the fireplace and flatten them