Regency Customs: All Hallows Eve

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Over the years, I have written about some of the traditions of All Hallows Eve:

Regency Customs: All Hallows Eve and Nutcrack Night

Regency Culture and Society: All Hallow’s Eve Part II

Regency Culture and Society: Soul-ing Song and Soul Cakes

Mostly for the working classes, many of the traditions had a regional element as the Perennial Calendar tells us:

ALLHALLOWS EVE Hallow Even is the Vigil of All Saints Day and it is customary on this night with young people in the North of England to dive for Apples or catch at them when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle and that with their mouths only their hands being tied behind their backs Nuts and Apples chiefly compose the entertainment and from the custom of flinging the former into the fire or cracking them with their teeth it has doubtless had its vulgar name of Nutcrack Night Mr Pennant tells us in his Tour in Scotland that the young women there determine the figure and size of their husbands by drawing cabbages blindfold on Allhallow Even and like the English fling Nuts into the fire On Nuts burning on Allhallows Eve from a Collection of Poems printed at Dublin in 1801 p 127 These glowing Nuts are emblems true Of what in human life we view The illmatched couple fret and fume And thus in strife themselves consume Or from each other wildly start And with a noise for ever part But see the happy happy pair Of genuine love and truth sincere With mutual fondness while they burn Still to each other kindly turn And as the vital sparks decay Together gently sink away Till life's fierce ordeal being past Their mingled ashes rest at last The passion of prying into futurity says Mr Burns makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state in all ages and nations and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind to see the remains of it among the more unenlightened in our own The minister of Callander in Perthshire mentioning peculiar customs says On All Saints Even they set up bonfires in every village When the bonfire is consumed the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle There is a stone put in near the circumference for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire and whatever stone is moved out of its place or injured before
next morning the person represented by that stone is de voted or fey and is supposed not to live twelve months from that day The people received the consecrated fire from the Druid priests next morning the virtues of which were supposed to continue for a year See Sinclair's Code of Health & c There was also a divination by Lady Birds Fly Lady Bird North South or East or West Fly where the Girl is found that I love best Snails were used in love divinations they were set to crawl on the hearth and were also thought to mark in the ashes the initials of the lover's name On the subject of love divinations there is a curious passage in Theocritus Idyllium 3d where the shepherd says Εγνων πρὰν ὁκά μεν μεμναμένω εἰ φιλέεις με Ουδὲ τὸ τηλέφιλον ποτεμαξατο το πλατάγημα Αλλ ̓ αὕτως απαλῷ ποτι πάχει εξεμαρανθη Intellexi nuper cum quaererem an me amares Telephilum allisum non edidit sonum Sed frustra in tenero cubito exaruit We shall finish our account of this evening with an extract from HALLOWEEN BY BURNS Yes let the rich deride the proud disdain The simple pleasures of the lowly train To me more dear congenial to my heart One native charm than all the gloss of art Upon that night when fairies light On Cassilis Downans dance Or owre the lays in splendid blaze On sprightly coursers prance Or for Colean the route is ta en Beneath the Moon's pale beams There up the cove to stray an rove Amang the rocks and streams GOLDSMITH To sport that night Amang the bonny winding banks Where Doon rins wimplin clear Where Bruce ance rul d the martial ranks An shook the Carrick spear Some merry friendly countra folks Together did convene To burn their nits an pou their stocks And haud their Halloween Fu blythe that night FORSTER, T. (1824). The Perennial Calendar, and Companion to the Almanack; Illustrating the Events of Every Day in the Year, as Connected with History, Chronology, Botany, Etc. With Useful Rules of Health, Observations on the Weather, Etc. Compiled from Scientific Authorities as Well as from the Manuscripts of Several Distinguished Persons, and Revised and Edited by T. F.. United Kingdom: (n.p.).

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