nce 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