]
In the Highlands of Scotland, as the evening of Hallowe'en wore on,
young people gathered in one of the houses and resorted to an almost
endless variety of games, or rather forms of divination, for the purpose
of ascertaining the future fate of each member of the company. Were they
to marry or remain single, was the marriage to take place that year or
never, who was to be married first, what sort of husband or wife she or
he was to get, the name, the trade, the colour of the hair, the amount
of property of the future spouse--these were questions that were eagerly
canvassed and the answers to them furnished never-failing
entertainment.[598] Nor were these modes of divination at Hallowe'en
confined to the Highlands, where the bonfires were kindled; they were
practised with equal faith and in practically the same forms in the
Lowlands, as we learn, for example, from Burns's poem _Hallowe'en_,
which describes the auguries drawn from a variety of omens by the
Ayrshire peasantry. These Lowlanders of Saxon descent may well have
inherited the rites from the Celts who preceded them in the possession
of the south country. A common practice at Hallowe'en was to go out
stealthily to a neighbour's kailyard and there, with shut eyes, to pull
up the first kail stock that came to hand. It was necessary that the
plants should be stolen without the knowledge or consent of their owner;
otherwise they were quite useless for the purpose of divination.
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