times clammy exhalations scattered in the air in small parts, which, in the night, by the resistance of the cold, are kindled, by cleaving to horse's ears and men's heades and shoulders, riding or walking; and that they cleave to hair or garments, it is by the same reason the dew cleaves to them, they being dry and attractive, and so more proper to receive them. Another kind of these flames are when the bodies of men and beasts are chafed and heated, they send forth a fat clammy sweat, which in like manner kindles, as is seen by sparkles of fire that fly about when a black horse is very hard curryed in the dark, or as the blue fire on the shells of oysters, caused by the nitrous salt. Livy also tells us of one Marius, a knight of Rome who, as he was making an oration to his soldiers in Spain with such vehemency as heated him, his head appeared to them all in a flame, though himself was not aware of it." Account of Storms, 1704, p. 79.

Hagmena.-The word "Hagmena" is by some supposed of an antiquity prior to the introduction of the Christian Faith. On the Norman Hoquinanno Douce observes: "This comes nearer to our word, which was probably imported with the Normans. It was also by the French called Haguillennes and Haguimento, and I have likewise found it corrupted into Haguirenleux," (and he refers to Carpentier, Menage, and other authorities). He says also: "I am further informed that the words used

upon this occasion are Hagmena, Hagmena, gives us cakes and cheese, and let us go away.' Cheese and oaten-cakes, which are called farls, are distributed on this occasion among the cryers." Subjoined is all that appears to have survived of the Yorkshire Hagmena Song:

"To-night it is the New Year's night, to-morrow is the day,

And we are come for our right and for
our ray,

As we used to do in old King Henry's
Day:

Sing fellows, sing, hag-man, ha!

If you go to the bacon-flick cut me a good bit;

Cut, cut and low, beware of your maw. Cut, cut, and round, beware of your thumb,

That me and my merry men may have

some:

Sing, fellows, sing, hag-man, ha! If you go to the black ark, bring me ten mark;

Ten mark ten pound, throw it down upon the ground,

That me and my merry men may have

some;

Sing, fellows, sing, hag-man, ha!"

For the following lines, which the common people repeat upon this occasion, on New Year's Day, in some parts of France, I am indebted to M. Olivier :

66

'Aguilaneuf de céans

On le voit a sa fenêtre,
Avec son petit bonnet blanc,
Il dit qu'il sera le Maître,
Mettera le Pot au feu;
Donnez nous, ma bonne dame,
Donnez nous Aguilaneuf."

A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for July, 1790, tells us: "In Scotland, till very lately (if not in the present time), there was a custom of distributing sweet cakes and a particular kind of sugared bread, for several days before and after the New Year; and on the last night of the old year (peculiarly called Hagmenai), the visitors and company made a point of not separating till after the clock struck twelve, when they rose, and, mutually kissing, wished each other a happy New Year.

Children and others, for several nights, went about from house to house as guisarts, that is, disguised, or in masquerade dresses, singing: "Rise up, good wife, and be no swier To deal your bread as long's your here, The time will come when you'll be dead, And neither want nor meal nor bread.' "Some of those masquerades had a fiddle, and, when admitted into a house, entertained the company with a dramatic dialogue, partly extempore."

We read in the "Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed" that "it is ordinary among some plebians in the South of Scotland, to go about from door to door upon New Year's Eve, crying Hagmena, a corrupted word from the Greek for holy month. John Dixon, holding forth against this custom once, in a sermon at Kelso, says: Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies? It is, the Devil be in the house! that's the meaning of its Hebrew original.'" Page 102. Comp. Tappy

Tousie.

The

Hair (i.) Customs.-The Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, in her Day-Book, 1676, notes the visits of one Richard Goodgeon to Brougham Castle to cut her ladyship's hair. custom of wearing the hair down the back loose, and a coif between the crown and the head, seems to have been preserved for a long time, and to have been in vogue on the Continent. The Princess Catherine of Aragon is described as wearing her hair so arranged in the contemporary narrative of her journey to England, previously to her espousal to Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII., and her ladies-in-waiting appear to have followed the same

not

fashion. Antiq. Repert., 1807, ii., p. 278. At the coronation of Elizabeth of York, in November, 1487, the Queen is described as wearing her fair yellow hair plain behind her back, with a caul of pipes over it, somewhat, perhaps, in the later Roman style, as we see it on coins. Compare Marriage, infrâ. This habit was confined, however, to women, for the younger portraits of Henry VII. on his coins represent him with long unkempt hair, somewhat like that worn by Lorenzo dé Medici in the paintings or prints of him, by members of the Della Rovera, Visconti, Este, and other families on coins of nearly the same period, and by Louis XII. of France on his Franco-Italian money, as well as in fact the fashion followed in the

15th and 16th centuries by all male personages of rank on the Continent. On the title of an edition of Donatus the Grammarian, printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1496, are four figures with their hair similarly left to fall over the neck and shoulders, and numerous illustrations of the fashion occur in Fairholt and Planché. The mode may be taken to have been borrowed from Italy.

Hair (ii.) Superstitions.-There is a vulgar notion that men's hair will sometimes turn grey upon a sudden and violent fright, to which Shakespear alludes in a speech of Falstaff to Prince Henry Thy father's beard is turned white with the news.' Grey remarks: "This whimsical opinion was humorously bantered by a wag in a coffee-house; who, upon hearing a young gentleman giving the same reason for the change of his hair from black to grey, observed that there was no great matter in it, and told the company that he had a friend, who wore a coal-black wig, which was turned grey by a fright in an instant." Of late years the large sums offered by the trade for hair of a particular hue and length have overcome in many instances the old repugnance to part with this ornament, not only on the ground of pride or vanity, but on that of superstitious fear; for it was anciently a current vulgar belief, that if any portion of hair was left about, the birds would steal it to build their nests with, a fatal consequence to the owner, especially if the bird was a pie. Going still farther back, we arrive at the barbarous idea, of which Scott has availed himself in the "Pirate," that hair thrown into the sea had the power of kindling a storm, or (as Scott has it) of appeasing the waters. The hair from a calf's tail, inserted in the cow's ear, is supposed, or was formerly, to be efficacious in making the mother forget the loss of its young one; and the hair of a dog, which has bitten you, is held to be an

antidote against any evil consequences, if given by the owner to the person bitten. But compare Hazlitt's Proverbs, 1882, p. 19.

Halcyon or Kingfisher.-See, as to the superstition about this bird, Nares, Glossary, 1859, in v., Halcyon. Hallow Eve at Oxford. See Christmas Prince.

Hallow E'en.-In North Wales, according to Pennant, there was a custom upon all Saints' Eve of making a great fire called Coel Coeth, when every family about an hour in the night makes a great bonfire in the most conspicuous place near the house, and when the fire is almost extinguished, every one throws a white stone into the ashes, having first marked it; then having said their prayers_turning round the fire, they go to bed. In the morning, as soon as they are up, they come to search out the stones, and if any one of them is found wanting they have a notion that the person who threw it in, will die before he sees another All Saints' Eve. They have a custom also of distributing Soul Cakes on All Souls' Day, at the receiving of which poor people pray to God to bless the next crop of wheat. But many of these customs, even in Pennant's time, had fallen into disuse. In Owen's account of the Bards we read: "The autumnal fire is still kindled in North Wales, being on the eve of the first day of November, and is attended by many ceremonies; such as running through the fire and smoke, each casting a stone into the fire, and all running off at the conclusion to escape from the black short-tailed sow; then supping upon parsneps, nuts, and apples: catching at an apple suspended by a string with the mouth alone, and the same by an apple in a tub of water: each throwing a nut into the fire; and those that burn bright, betoken prosperity to the owners through the following year, but those that burn black and crackle, denote misfortune. 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.' Owen has prefaced these curious particulars by the following observations: "Amongst the first aberrations may be traced that of the knowledge of the great Huon, or the Supreme Being, which was obscured by the hieroglyphics or emblems of his different attributes, so that the grovelling minds of the multitude often sought not beyond those representations for the objects of worship and adoration. This opened an inlet for numerous errors more minute; and many superstitions became attached to their periodical solemnities, and more particularly to their rejoicing fires, on the appearance of vegetation in

spring, and on the completion of harvest in autumn."

says

Hallow E'en in Scotland. Shaw, in his Account of Moray, seems to consider the festivity of this night as a kind of harvest home rejoicing: A solemnity was kept," says he, on the eve of the first of November as a thanksgiving for the safe in-gathering of the produce of the fields. This I am told, but have not seen it, is observed in Buchan and other counties, by having Hallow Eve fire kindled on some rising ground." Martin tells us that the inhabitants of St. Kilda, on the festival of All Saints, baked "a large cake, in the form of a triangle, furrowed round, and which was to be all eaten that night." "The passion of prying into futurity, Burns, in the notes to his poem, makes a striking part of the history of human nature, in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind to see the remains of it among the more unenlightened in our own.” He gives therefore the principal charms and spells of this night, so big with prophecy to the peasantry in the West of Scotland. One of these by women is by pulling stalks of corn another by the blue clue: a third by eating the apple at the glass. Burns goes on to enumerate several other very observable customs of divination on this even of Allhallows. The first is " Sowing Hemp seed." The second is: "To win three wechts o'naethings." Others are:

young

"to fathom the stack three times," 66 'to dip your left shirt sleeve in a burn where three Lairds' lands meet"; and the last is a singular species of divination "with three luggies or dishes." The minister of Logierait, in Perthshire, says: "On the evening of the 31st of October, O.S. among many others, one remarkable ceremony is observed. Heath, broom, and dressings of flax are tied upon a pole. This faggot is then kindled. One takes it upon his shoulders, and, running, bears it round the village. A crowd attend. When the first faggot is burnt out, a second is bound to the pole, and kindled in the same manner as before. Numbers of these blazing faggots are often carried about together, and when the night happens to be dark they form a splendid illumination." The minister of Callander says: "On All Saints' Even they set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire is consumed, the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle. There is a stone put in near the circumference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire; and whatever stone is moved out of its place, or injured next morning, the person represented by that stone is de

voted or fey, and is supposed not to live twelve months from that day. The people received the consecrated fire from the Druid priests next morning, the virtues of which were supposed to continue for a year." The minister of Kirkmichael, in Perthshire, says: "The practice of light

ing bonfires on the first night of winter, still prevails in this and the neighbouring accompanied with various ceremonies, highland parishes. Formerly the Hallow Even fire, a relic of Druidism, was kindled in Buchan. Various magic ceremonies were then celebrated to counteract the influence of witches and demons, and to prognosticate to the young their success or disappointment in the matrimonial lottery. These being devoutly finished, the hallow fire was kindled, and guarded by the male part of the family. Societies were formed, either by pique or humour, to scatter certain fires, and the attack and defence were often conducted with art and fury."--"But now the hallow fire, when kindled, is attended by children only and the country girl, renouncing the rites of magic, endeavours to enchant her swain by the charms of dress and of industry." Pennant tells us, in his "Tour in Scotland," that the young women there determine the figure and size of their husbands by drawing cabbages blind-fold on Allhallow Even. "The first ceremony of Hallowe'en is pulling each a stock or plant of kail. They must go out, hand-in-hand, with eyes shut, and pull the first they meet with. Its being big or little, straight or crooked, is prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their spells the husband or wife. If any yird or earth stick to the root, that is tocher or fortune; and the taste of the custoc, that is the heart of the stem, is indicative of the natural temper and disposition. Lastly, the stems, or to give them their ordinary appellation, the runts, are placed somewhere above the head of the door; and the christian names of the people whom chance brings into the house, are, according to the priority of placing the runts, the names in question."

Of the scanty particulars known to us of the great Watt one is that his grandfather, Thomas Watt, was a baillie at Greenock, till his death in 1734, and in this capacity fined evil-doers on Hallow E'en night. The Dundee Advertiser, reporting the celebration of the old Scotish festival of "Hallowe'en " at Balmoral Castle in 1871, says :-"The demonstration has come to be known in Balmoral and throughout the district as 'The Queen's Hallowe'en;' and in accordance with the royal desire, and following the custom of past years, most of the people, both on the Balmoral and Abergeldie es