BELTANE EVE.
“Now the sun’s gone out o’ sight,Beet the ingle, snuff the light;In glens the fairies skip and dance,And witches wallop o’er to France.”Ramsay.
“Now the sun’s gone out o’ sight,Beet the ingle, snuff the light;In glens the fairies skip and dance,And witches wallop o’er to France.”Ramsay.
“Now the sun’s gone out o’ sight,Beet the ingle, snuff the light;In glens the fairies skip and dance,And witches wallop o’er to France.”
“Now the sun’s gone out o’ sight,
Beet the ingle, snuff the light;
In glens the fairies skip and dance,
And witches wallop o’er to France.”
Ramsay.
Ramsay.
Beltane Eve[R]is a night of considerable importance and of much anxiety to the Highland farmer, as being the grand anniversary review night, on which all the tribes of witches, warlocks, wizards, and fairies, in the kingdom, are to be reviewed by Satan and his chief generalsin person, and new candidates admitted into infernal orders. When such a troop, under such a commander, are let loose upon the community, it is natural to suppose that much misery and devastation will follow in their train; and when rewards are only conferred on those most consummate in wickedness, and those most adept in cutting diabolical cantrips, it is natural for every honest man to feel anxious that they may not obtain promotion at his expense. In order, therefore, to be perfectly secure from the machinations of so dangerous a society, every prudent man will resort to those safeguards that will keep them at the staff’s end. Messengers are therefore dispatched to the woods for cargoes of the blessed rowan tree, the virtues of which are well known. Being formed into the shape of a cross, by means of a red thread, the virtues of which too are very eminent, those crosses are, with all due solemnity, inserted in the different door-lintels in the town, and protect those premises from the cantrips of the most diabolical witch in the universe. Care should also be taken to insert one of them in the midden, which has at all times been a favourite site ofrendezvouswith the black sisterhood. This cheaply purchased precaution once observed, the people of those countries will now go to bed as unconcernedly, and sleep as soundly, as on any other night.
While those necessary precautions are in preparation, the matron or housekeeper is employed in a not less interesting avocation to the juvenile generation,i. e.baking the Beltane bannocks. Next morning the children are presented each with a bannock, with as much joyas an heir to an estate his title-deeds; and having their pockets well lined with cheese and eggs, to render the entertainment still more sumptuous, they hasten to the place of assignation, to meet the little band assembled on the brow of some sloping hill, to reel their bannocks, and learn their future fate. With hearty greetings they meet, and with their knives make the signs of life and death on their bannocks. These signs are a cross, or the sign of life, on the one side; and a cypher, or the sign of death, on the other. This being done, the bannocks are all arranged in a line, and on their edges let down the hill. This process is repeated three times, and if the cross most frequently present itself, the owner will live to celebrate another Beltane day; but if the cypher is oftenest uppermost, he is doomed to die of course. This sure prophecy of short life, however, seldom spoils the appetites of the unfortunate short-livers, who will handle their knives with as little signs of death as their more fortunate companions. Assembling around a rousing fire of collected heath and brushwood, the ill-fated bannocks are soon demolished, amidst the cheering and jollity of the youthful association.[S]