In lonely country districts the villagers used to gather together round great log fires in their houses, and tell each other stories of queer noises, strange flutterings, and trembling shadows. But it was a pleasure able eeriness which they called up and they played games in which the apples and nuts of the Romans continued to play their part.
Eating an apple before a looking glass was traditionally supposed to reveal a girl's future husband, who would be seen peering over her shoulder. Ducking for apples, still a popular Hallowe'en game used to be preceded by a more risky performance in which a lighted candle and an apple were placed at opposite ends of a stick and the stick twirled horizontally. The idea was to bite the apple as it passed—though more often the competitors received hot candle grease instead.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.