3-017-329 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Allhallows Eve", designed by J.T. Lucas, 1865. Engraving of a drawing. 'The last night of October, the vigil of All Saints' Day, was believed, in Scotland especially, as Burns says, in a note to his poems, "to be a night when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands." But kinder and gentler spirits haunted the rustic hearth on that night...[Man poets] have borne testimony to the common practice of simple arts of divination, by which, in the mystic hour of Allhallow Even, the fond rustic maidens would attempt to discover the fortunes of their hearts...for the young woman delineated in our Engraving, who has not yet decided on her choice, the surest and most satisfactory method of knowing who should be her lover and husband was that of eating an apple while she looked in her glass; a method which could not fail of success when the favoured youth him-self, presuming on her indulgence and curiosity, had slily found his way into her chamber, and taken his stand behind her back, so that his face should be reflected in the truthful mirror by a very natural magic'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.