Meanwhile everyone is drinking the health of everyone else, Celt and Saxon, countryman and citizen; and as no one can pass an acquaintance without hospitality offered and taken, and as, moreover, the dew of Ben Nevis is somewhat potent, the shaking of hands and wishing of good luck soon become fairly exuberant. Presently, however, everyone sets off to first-foot his friends.
The origin of this ceremony it is difficult to suggest, unless it be to represent some priestly visitation, a sacrament assuring to the people throughout the coming year the blessings of food and drink. A door-to-door proceeding, at anyrate, it is--accompanied by much eating of cake and drinking of whisky, and it will last well into the morning hours. Lucky, for this performance, are accounted those dark of skin. If the first-footer be fair the tradition runs that it bodes ill-fortune for the year to the house whose threshold he or she has crossed; and often enough a door is shut in the face of such a friend, simply because of his complexion. Moreover, the visitor must not come empty-handed; and so the bottle and broken wine-glass which each carries serve as a double introduction.
And now all who sat up till the city bells struck twelve, as well in the crowded tenements here as in the far-off suburbs of the rich, have wished each other a good New Year, and are retiring to rest. Among them, doubtless, there are many thoughts of sadness. Many a widow was a wife last year; many a ruined home was prosperous; many a soiled heart still was pure. But the old year, with its sorrow, has passed away in the night, and with the New Year’s dawn a glimmer of hope comes in at the darkest casement.
_Printed by_ M’FARLANE & ERSKINE, _Edinburgh_.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Text uses “humble-bees”, not “bumble-bees”.
Page 170: “he iss a fine lad” was printed with two s’s.
End of Project Gutenberg's Sketch-Book of the North, by George Eyre-Todd