The Leinster Hallowe’en Spell

Chambers printed a story from a Leinster family of the eighteenth century. One Hallowe’en a young wife fell into a heavy sleep from which her husband could not wake her, and dreamed she was dragged to a strange house where supper was laid for a visitor; her husband told her that whoever was to be her second husband had tried a spell that night, and within months he was dead. Later a young man introduced to the widow started at the sight of her and confessed that he had once sat up all night over a Hallowe’en spell and seen her enter his room. They married and lived happily, and their daughter told the tale.