3] 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.[585] And in the Highlands of
Scotland anybody who pleased could hear proclaimed aloud the names of
parishioners doomed to perish within the next twelve months, if he would
only take a three-legged stool and go and sit on it at three
cross-roads, while the church clock was striking twelve at midnight on
Hallowe'en. It was even in his power to save the destined victims from
their doom by taking with him articles of wearing apparel and throwing
them away, one by one, as each name was called out by the mysterious
voice.[586]

[Hallowe'en bonfires in the Highlands of Scotland; John Ramsay's account
of the Hallowe'en bonfires; divination from stones at the fire;
Hallowe'en fires in the parishes of Callander and Logierait.]

But while a glamour of mystery and awe has always clung to Hallowe'en in
the minds of the Celtic peasantry, the popular celebration of the
festival has been, at least in modern times, by no means of a
prevailingly gloomy cast; on the contrary it has been attended by
picturesque features and merry pastimes, which rendered it the gayest
night of all the year. Amongst the things which in the Highlands of
Scotland contributed to invest the festival with a romantic beauty were
the bonfires which used to blaze at frequent intervals on the heights.
"On the last day of autumn children gathered ferns, tar-barrels, the
long thin stalks called _gainisg_, and everything suitable for a
bonfire. These were placed in a heap on some eminence near the house,
and in the evening set fire to. The fires were called _Samhnagan_. There
was one for each house, and it was an object of ambition who should have
the biggest. Whole districts were brilliant with bonfires, a