Guleesh took the hint, and
everything went as the fairy had said. And he married the daughter of
the King of France; and they had never a cark nor a care, a sickness nor
a sorrow, a mishap nor a misfortune to the day of their death.[582]
[Divination resorted to in Celtic countries at Hallowe'en.]
In all Celtic countries Hallowe'en seems to have been the great season
of the year for prying into the future; all kinds of divination were put
in practice that night. We read that Dathi, a king of Ireland in the
fifth century, happening to be at the Druids' Hill (_Cnoc-nan-druad_) in
the county of Sligo one Hallowe'en, ordered his druid to forecast for
him the future from that day till the next Hallowe'en should come round.
The druid passed the night on the top of the hill, and next morning made
a prediction to the king which came true.[583] In Wales Hallowe'en was
the weirdest of all the _Teir Nos Ysbrydion_, or Three Spirit Nights,
when the wind, "blowing over the feet of the corpses," bore sighs to the
houses of those who were to die within the year. People thought that if
on that night they went out to a cross-road and listened to the wind,
they would learn all the most important things that would befall them
during the next twelve months.[584] In Wales, too, not so long ago women
used to congregate in the parish churches on the night of Hallowe'en and
read their fate from the flame of the candle which each of them held in
her hand; also they heard the names or saw the coffins of the
parishioners who would die within the year, and many were the sad scenes
to which these gloomy visions gave rise.
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