irls went out into the garden blindfold and pulled up
cabbages: if the cabbage was well grown, the girl would have a handsome
husband, but if it had a crooked stalk, the future spouse would be a
stingy old man. Nuts, again, were placed in pairs on the bar of the
fire, and from their behaviour omens were drawn of the fate in love and
marriage of the couple whom they represented. Lead, also, was melted and
allowed to drop into a tub of cold water, and from the shapes which it
assumed in the water predictions were made to the children of their
future destiny. Again, apples were bobbed for in a tub of water and
brought up with the teeth; or a stick was hung from a hook with an apple
at one end and a candle at the other, and the stick being made to
revolve you made a bite at the apple and sometimes got a mouthful of
candle instead.[621] In County Leitrim, also, down to near the end of
the nineteenth century various forms of divination were practised at
Hallowe'en. Girls ascertained the character of their future husbands by
the help of cabbages just as in Queen's County. Again, if a girl found a
branch of a briar-thorn which had bent over and grown into the ground so
as to form a loop, she would creep through the loop thrice late in the
evening in the devil's name, then cut the briar and put it under her
pillow, all without speaking a word. Then she would lay her head on the
pillow and dream of the man she was to marry. Boys, also, would dream in
like manner of love and marriage at Hallowe'en, if only they would
gather ten leaves of ivy without speaking, throw away one, and put the
other nine under their pillow. Again, divination was practised by means
of a cake called _barm-breac_, in which a nut and a ring were baked.
Whoever got the ring would be married first; whoever got the nut would
marry a widow or a widower; but if the nut were an empty shell, he or
she would remain unwed. Again, a girl would take a clue of worsted, go
to a lime kiln in the gloaming, and throw the clew into the kiln in the
devil's name, while she held fast the other end of the thread. Then she
would rewind the thread and ask, "Who holds my clue?" and the name of
her future husband would 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. O