October 31, 2023
Introduction: In this article – to help celebrate Halloween tonight – Melissa Davenport Berry writes about ways our female ancestors told their fortunes on Halloween, especially trying to discover their future husband. Melissa is a genealogist who has a blog, AnceStory Archives, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
On Halloween there is magic in the air! And fortunes can be sought by the simplest means, including the use of apples, chestnuts, or yarn.
Apple Lore
This 1955 newspaper article described several Halloween games using apples.
One of the games used apples to predict the future.
Apples are just one way to tell your future, especially in all matters of romance. So – all singletons sit back and sip your cider, because there is a little witch in all of us and I found a few tricks to get the charm on! If you are serious then heed these tips.
“By this paring let me discover
The initial letter of my true lover.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers served up some interesting techniques borrowed from the old ways.
Here’s one of the methods reported by this article:
The most popular means of learning the all-important fact about the future is to peel an apple and throw the skin over your left shoulder. It will form the initial of your future husband.
The San Francisco Call elaborated on the apple-peel technique for telling the future.
In 1928 the H. G. Hill Company even ran an ad using the fortune-telling method as the best way to utilize their big red apples, 2 for 5¢ or a box for $2.99!
Remember the popular TV series Charmed? Well, in one episode Pheobe did a little apple magic, but I am not sure if the powers that be saw the warlock nature in her love.
Chestnuts Reveal Who Is the Best Choice for a Mate
Apples aren’t the only means of predicting the future or learning about a potential husband at Halloween time. The above Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper article also reported on another method, using chestnuts:
A number of chestnuts may be placed on the top of a hot stove. The girl who is unable to decide which of several men will be the best to accept may name each of the chestnuts for one of her admirers. She must scratch his name on the shell with a pin she has worn since rising in the morning.
Absolute silence must be maintained while the chestnuts are on the stove, until one of them sputters and moves away from the others. The man represented by this chestnut is the right one to encourage.
Divination from Yarn
Another Halloween method of telling the future or finding a mate involves yarn.
“On Halloween your ball of yarn
From out the window fling,
And he who is to be your fate
Will come to wind the string!”
During colonial times, the lasses would throw blue yarn out of a window on Halloween; while holding one end of the thread, she then rewound it while saying the Pater Noster backwards, and, upon looking outside, she would see her future husband. The yarn must be blue wool which has been teased and spun by the fortune-seeker from the fleece of a male lamb.
According to John Metcalf Taylor in The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, 1647-1697, it seems yarn magic was being used by Katherine Harrison, who was accused of witchcraft in 1683.
Elizabeth, the wife of Simon Smith, testified that Katherine was a “sabbath breaker, and one that told fortunes.”
Elizabeth told the court that Katherine predicted her husband’s name would be Simon before she married. She also noted that:
“Katherine did often spin so great a quantity of fine linen yarn/did never know nor hear of any other woman that could spin so much.”
May your magic help you find your special one tonight! Happy Halloween!!!
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Note on the header image: “Snap-Apple Night,” painted by Irish artist Daniel Maclise in 1833. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
This painting was inspired by a Halloween party he attended in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The caption in the first exhibit catalogue:
There Peggy was dancing with Dan
While Maureen the lead was melting,
To prove how their fortunes ran
With the cards could Nancy dealt in;
There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will,
In nuts their true-love burning,
And poor Norah, though smiling still
She’d missed the snap-apple turning.
