On the following morning the stones are searched for
in the fire, and if any be missing, they betide ill to those who threw
them in."[615] According to Sir John Rhys, the habit of celebrating
Hallowe'en by lighting bonfires on the hills is perhaps not yet extinct
in Wales, and men still living can remember how the people who assisted
at the bonfires would wait till the last spark was out and then would
suddenly take to their heels, shouting at the top of their voices, "The
cropped black sow seize the hindmost!" The saying, as Sir John Rhys
justly remarks, implies that originally one of the company became a
victim in dead earnest. Down to the present time the saying is current
in Carnarvonshire, where allusions to the cutty black sow are still
occasionally made to frighten children.[616] We can now understand why
in Lower Brittany every person throws a pebble into the midsummer
bonfire.[617] Doubtless there, as in Wales and the Highlands of
Scotland,[618] omens of life and death have at one time or other been
drawn from the position and state of the pebbles on the morning of All
Saints' Day. The custom, thus found among three separate branches of the
Celtic stock, probably dates from a period before their dispersion, or
at least from a time when alien races had not yet driven home the wedges
of separation between them.
[Divination as to love and marriage at Hallowe'en in Wales.]
In Wales, as in Scotland, Hallowe'en was also the great season for
forecasting the future in respect of love and marriage, and some of the
forms of divination employed for this purpose resembled those which were
in use among the Scotch peasantry.
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