ps 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.]

In Wales, as in Scotland, Hallowe'en was also the great season for
forecasting the future in respect of love and marriage, and some of the
forms of divination employed for this purpose resembled those which were
in use among the Scotch peasantry. Two girls, for example, would make a
little ladder of yarn, without breaking it from the ball, and having
done so they would throw it out of the window. Then one of the girls,
holding the ball in her hand, would wind the yarn back, repeating a
rhyme in Welsh. This she did thrice, and as she wound the yarn she would
see her future husband climbing up the little ladder. Again, three bowls
or basins were placed on a table. One of them contained clean water, one
dirty water, and one was empty. The girls of the household, and
sometimes the boys too, then eagerly tried their fortunes. They were
blindfolded, led up to the table, and dipped their hands into a bowl. If
they happened to dip into the clean water, they would marry maidens or
bachelors; if into the dirty water, they would be widowers or widows; if
into the empty bowl, they would live unmarried. Again, if a girl,
walking backwards, would place a knife among the leeks on Hallowe'en,
she would see her future husband come and pick up the knife and throw it
into the middle of the garden.[619]