ing examined for footprints. If one was turned from the door, guests or a marriage was prophesied; if toward the door, a death.
To have prophetic dreams a girl should search for a briar grown into a hoop, creep through thrice in the name of the devil, cut it in silence, and go to bed with it under her pillow. A boy should cut ten ivy leaves, throw away one and put the rest under his head before he slept.
If a girl leave beside her bed a glass of water with a sliver of wood in it, and say before she falls asleep:
Come this night and rescue me,"
she will dream of falling off a bridge into the water, and of being saved at the last minute by the spirit of her future husband. To receive a drink from his hand she must eat a cake of flour, soot, and salt before she goes to bed.
The Celtic spirit of yearning for the unknown, retained nowhere else as much as in
