HALLOWEVEN or Hallowe’en, the vigil of Hallowmas or All Saints’ Day. For some account of the singular observances by which it used to be, and to some extent still is, distinguished in Scotland and elsewhere, reference may be made to such works as Braud’s Popular Antiquities, Chambers’s Booh of Days, or better still to the well-known poem of Burns. Though sometimes neglected in modern practice, the most essential part of Hallowe’en ritual seems to consist in the lighting by each household of a bonfire at nightfall. This points to the very ancient and widely-diffused practice of kindling sacred fires at certain seasons of the year. While the Germanic nations had their Osterfeuer and Johannisfeuer, the Celtic had their Bealtine or Beil tine (see Beltane) and Samhtheine, the former on the eve of May 1, and the latter on the eve of November 1. Probably the winter as well as the summer festival was from the beginning regarded as a season at which the fairies were both unusually active and unusually propitious; but there is no evidence to show that the methods of divination at present usually resorted to, although of great antiquity, were originally regarded as limited in their efficacy to any one day. See Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, ch. XX. (Elemente), and ch. xxxiv. (Aberglaube).