The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-10-26
HALLOWEEN FASHIONABLE
ills Quite Correct to Invoke the Fairies NowadaysA
and Pillow Case Party Is Always Amusng--How to
Learn Your Fate in Various WAYS.

All old things come into fashion
again if you wait long enough. Hal
lowe'en now receives fashionable sane
tion-not that sensible folk care, who
have always had fine time on the
last day of October. But it is interest
ing to know that the ghostly celebra-
tions will be more widespread this
year than usual.
Although often neglected in modern
practice, the most essential part of
the Halloween ritual consists in the
lighting of a bonfire in front of the
house at nightfalI Such a practice is
hardly possible in city street, but IN
village towns the vigil of Hallowmas,
the eve of All Saints day, is often
kept by the light of a blazing bon
fire.
But, although ritually less correct, to
young folks, the most important cele-
brations are the parties to play old
fashioned games and, in various ways,
to learn their fate from the fairies. For
on Halloween, as all the world knows,
the fairies are all uncommonly good
tempered and propitious. Ghosts, too,
abound in hitherto unhaunted places
on the last night of October, but even
they are in their mildest moods.
The old-fashioned sheet and pillow
case party is a favorite form of Hal
lowe'en entertainment among the
young folks. Each guest arrives at the
home of the hostess wrapped in sheet
and disguised by a pillow-case on his
head. Two holes leave room for the
mock-ghost to see, but he must neither
laugh nor speak.
The hostess, also CARRIED in sheet and
pillow-case. stands in the han dimly
lighted with Jack o'Lanterns and bows
low to each guest as he arrive. She
does not make a sound, but points to
the room in which they are to go.
All about the dimly lighted rooms
the spectres stand until every one has
arrived and the hostess motions them
to follow her. She leads them through
dark passages and either up creeky
stairs to an attic or down into the cell
lar. where, in morgue-like cave,
fortune teller awaits their arrival.
Each one in turn learns his or her fate
from the old woman and is asked to
back down or up the stairs If they wish
the secrets just told them to come
true.
Just before supper the ghosts are
permitted to depart and appear, rein
cdrndleu, III tHe perSOlS VI up-lO~udtS
young folks.
The old apple-ducking party is still
in vogue, but not so much so as it
was in the days of our grandmothers.
1t is considered, among effete mod
erns. too strenuous a form of amuse-
ment to rescue floating apples from a
tub by the aid of the teeth only. 1t
is more popular to lean over the back
of a chair with fork in the mouth
and, while the apples float about in
the water, to try to spear one.
The old fashion of naming the APP
pies and counting the seeds first came
into common practice at Halloween
parties. The guests name each others
apples with the name of a person of
the opposite sex and, when the seeds
are taken out, the owner of the apple
counts them with the old rhyme: zone.
love; two, love; three, love, they
say; four, / love with all my heart;
five. is cast away; six, he loves; seven,
she loves; eight, both love; nine, he
comes; ten, he tarries; eleven, he
courts; twelve, he marries. To make