Amongst the things which in the
Highlands of Scotland contributed to invest the festival with a
romantic beauty were the bonfires which used to blaze at frequent
intervals on the heights. "On the last day of autumn children
gathered ferns, tar-barrels, the long thin stalks called _g?inisg,_
and everything suitable for a bonfire. These were placed in a heap
on some eminence near the house, and in the evening set fire to. The
fires were called _Samhnagan._ There was one for each house, and it
was an object of ambition who should have the biggest. Whole
districts were brilliant with bonfires, and their glare across a
Highland loch, and from many eminences, formed an exceedingly
picturesque scene." Like the Beltane fires on the first of May, the
Hallowe'en bonfires seem to have been kindled most commonly in the
Perthshire Highlands. In the parish of Callander they still blazed
down to near the end of the eighteenth century. When the fire had
died down, the ashes were carefully collected in the form of a
circle, and a stone was put in, near the circumference, for every
person of the several families interested in the bonfire.
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