Much superstition and custom was attached to special days in the year. These centred around the rites and beliefs of both the old pagan feasts and the newer Christian holidays.For obvious reasons some of the best examples were associated with Halloween, when the dead came back to haunt the living and the fairies were abroad. As has already been described, this was a key occasion in the year for identifying potential husbands, and yet another custom for predicting the outcome of love on Halloween night came from the placing of pairs of chestnuts by the open fire to represent an engaged couple. These would be seriously scrutinised and, if they stayed together on being heated, the couple would live together in harmony, but if they scattered there would be much strife.

It was also thought that if you washed some item of your clothing in a running brook on Halloween, hung it on a thorn bush and then waited, you would see a vision of your future lover come to turn the washing on the bush.

All spells carried out on that night were thought to be in the name of the devil and so carried a certain risk. One story has it that on Halloween a young servant girl was trying out a spell in front of the mirror to find a lover, but it went wrong and she saw something too horrible to reveal to anyone, and the girl was certain she would die. The other staff in the house tried to calm her fears by laughing it off, but sure enough, the next night she was found Iying dead on the floor in front of the mirror with her face horribly contorted and the glass shattered in pieces around her.

Naturally at this time there were many supposed predictors of death, including knocking over a candle on Halloween which was considered a very ill omen Small piles of salt were often placed on a plate, one to represent each member of the family. A pile that caved in signified death within the year for that person.

At Halloween people avoided taking shortcuts across beaches, fiekls or cliffs for fear the fairies would lead them astray Worse still would happen if you were out walking on the last night of November, the official closing of the fairy season of merriment. This was the night for the dead to have their fling; dancing with the fairies on the hillsides and drinking their potent wine. After that they would return to rest in their coffins until the following November.

From the Appletree Press title: A Little Book of Irish Superstitions.

Further reading: Irish Ghosts.