School: Gráinseach Ailt an Chaistín (St. Johnston)
- Location:
- Saint Johnstown, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Seán Ó Seanacháin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1106, Page 38
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)Burning nuts. A boy and girl are named and a nut to represent each is placed on a bar of the grate or on the top of the range as the case may be. When these nuts become heated and begin to burn, if they keep close together it is supposed to foretell the marriage at some future date of the persons named; but if they separate in burning their paths will lie apart in life. People in the company keep the ashes and put under their pillows so that they may dream of their future husbands or wives. Raking the rick. At midnight on Hallowe'en if a person goes out to the rick of hay and rakes it with a rake three times in the devil's name, at the third going round his future partner is supposed to come out from behind the rick and take the rake out of his hand. A husband, wife and their family were all sitting round the fire on hallowe'en and the servant girl went out and raked the rick and the man of the house took the rake out of her hand. She came in and told the story and said she was positive it was he, the man of the house. The man and his wife were equally certain that they never stirred from the fireside. In about four months afterwards the woman of the house fell sick and died and in less than a year after that the man of the house married his former servant maid
