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 down
neatly on the open hearth. If they find next morning a footprint turned
towards the door, it signifies a death in the family within the year;
but if the footprint is turned in the opposite direction, it bodes a
marriage. Again, divination by eavesdropping is practised in the Isle of
Man in much the same way as in Scotland. You go out with your mouth full
of water and your hands full of salt and listen at a neighbour's door,
and the first name you hear will be the name of your husband. Again,
Manx maids bandage their eyes and grope about the room till they dip
their hands in vessels full of clean or dirty water, and so on; and from
the thing they touch they draw corresponding omens. But some people in
the Isle of Man observe these auguries, not on Hallowe'en or Hollantide
Eve, as they call it, which was the old Manx New Year's Eve, but on the
modern New Year's Eve, that is, on the thirty-first of December. The
change no doubt marks a transition from the ancient to the modern mode
of dating the beginning of the year.[625]

[Hallowe'en fires and divination in Lancashire; candles lighted to keep
off the witches; divination at Hallowe'en in Northumberland; Hallowe'en
fires in France.]

In Lancashire, also, some traces of the old Celtic celebration of
Hallowe'en have been reported in modern times. It is said that "fires
are still lighted in Lancashire, on Hallowe'en, under the name of
Beltains or Teanlas; and even such cakes as the Jews are said to have
made in honour of the Queen of Heaven, are yet to be found at this
season amongst the inhabitants of the banks of the Ribble.... Both the
fires and the cakes, however, are now connected with superstitious
notions respecting Purgatory, etc."[626] On Hallowe'en, too, the
Lancashire maiden "strews the ashes which are to take the form of one or
more letters of her lover's name; she throws hemp-seed over her shoulder
and timidly glances to see who follows her."[627] Again, witches in
Lancashire used to gather on Hallowe'en at the Malkin Tower, a ruined
and desolate farm-house in the forest of Pendle. They assembled for no
good purpose; but you could keep the infernal rout at bay by carrying a
lighted candle about the fells from eleven to twelve o'clock at night.
The