ppear may shut the doors and do you some mischief. Then take that
instrument used in winnowing the corn, which, in our country dialect,
we call a wecht; and go through all the attitudes of letting down corn
against the wind. Repeat it three times; and the third time, an
apparition will pass through the barn, in at the windy door, and out
at the other, having both the figure in question, and the appearance
or retinue marking the employment or station in life.]

[Footnote 40: Take an opportunity of going unnoticed, to a bean stack,
and fathom it three times round. The last fathom of the last time, you
will catch in your arms the appearance of your future conjugal
yoke-fellow.]

[Footnote 41: You go out, one or more, for this is a social spell, to a
south running spring or rivulet, where "three lairds' lands meet," and
dip your left shirt-sleeve. Go to bed in sight of a fire, and hang
your wet sleeve before it to dry. Lie awake: and, some time near
midnight, an apparition having the exact figure of the grand object in
question, will come and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side
of it.]

[Footnote 42: Take three dishes: put clean water in one, foul water in
another, and leave the third empty; blindfold a person and lead him to
the hearth where the dishes are ranged; he (or she) dips the left
hand: if by chance in the clean water, the future husband or wife will
come to the bar of matrimony a maid; if in the foul, a widow; if in
the empty dish, it foretells, with equal certainty, no marriage at
all. It is repeated three times, and every time the arrangement of the
dishes is altered.]

[Footnote 43: Sowens, with butter instead of milk to them, is always
the Halloween supper.]

* * * * *

XXVI.

MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN.

A DIRGE.

[The origin of this fine poem is alluded to by Burns in one of his
letters to Mrs. Dunlop: "I had an old grand-uncle with whom my mother
lived in her girlish years: the good old man was long blind ere he
died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit and cry,
while my mother would sing the simple old song of 'The Life and Age of
Man.'" From that truly venerable woman, long after the death of her
distinguished son, Cromek, in collecting the Reliques, obtained a copy
by recitation of the older strain. Though the tone and sentiment
coincide closely with "Man was made to Mourn," I agree with Lockhart,
that Burns wrote it in obedience to hi