Sieve and Let Sieve

Our old Hallowe'en post gained a couple of new comments when we re-tweeted it at the start of the week. One comment asked about the significance of the sieve and knife used by brave lasses trying to divine the identity of their future husband.


I had a look back at the Ernest Walker Marwick notes we had looked at before and the full extract reads:

"How would you like to sit in a dark barn, with all the doors open, when all the bogles are around, winnowing with an empty sieve on which you placed a knife, and knowing that an apparition having the appearance of your future partner would pass the door?"

'Winnowing' means to sift or sort the wheat from the chaff and I wonder if shaking the sieve around with a reflective blade on the top was meant to bounce any moonlight that made its way through the open bar door, thus producing a fleeting 'apparition'?

I found another reference to a sieve in the same record in an extract discussing old fashioned medical treatments:

Orkney Archive Reference D31/72/1/22

I seem to recall a few witchy stories involving sieves too which I shall try and unearth in the next week or so. To be continued...


See also these weird sieve-related punishments as unearthed by dusty. Here and here.


Does anyone have any more sieve stories to share?

It's that sieve again!

Here's an update on the use of sieves in punishments. While reading some very entertaining pages of the Presbytery of Orkney Minute book for 1639-1646, I found a curious entry about a woman called Janet Sutherland from South Ronaldsay:

"Ordaines the Brethren to make search in their congregations for Janet Sutherland fugitive from South Ronaldsay for turning the sieve and shiers, and to use diligence to put her home to her owne congregation to undergo orderly tryall" From the minutes for 3rd November 1643.

It turns out (pardon the pun) that sieve is another name for riddle, and in the Scottish National Dictionary there is the following definition and example of an explanation from 1825:

"As in English, a coarse-meshed sieve. Phrs: the riddle and the shears a method of divination (1) Fif., e Lth. 1825 Jam.:The riddle is set on its side, the points of a pair of large scissors being so fixed in it (separate from each other), that the riddle may be suspended by the hold taken of it by the scissors. One handle of the scissors is placed on the finger of one person, and the other on that of another. Some words, to the same purpose with the following are repeated : By St Paul and St Peter, did A.B. steal my yarn? or whatever is lost. If the person be innocent, the riddle remains motionless, if guilty it immediately turns round...This, among the other superstitious customs common on Halloween is also used as a mode of divination in regard to marriage."

This could be the reason why, as mentioned in a previous blog, the man was punished by being made to wear a sieve on his head. 

Reference OCR/4/1 Presbytery of Orkney Minutes 1639-1646

Our first encounter with sieves here.

Weird Punishment of the Week

As I was reading through a folder from the Ernest Marwick Collection, I stumbled on this weird form of punishment in North Faray.

It's certainly one of the strangest punishments I've read about, but I'll be on the look out now for more. If you've got any to share I'd love to hear about them.

Archive Reference: D31/2/4 no. 69
For information on the window tax try this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax

Neeping Oor Heeds.

As is usual on the 1st of November, the citizens of Kirkwall picked their way into work this morning through a gluey crust of flour and eggshells. It is the custom here for a certain section of the populace to bombard the buildings of the town with both.

Lat night we received visits from 'trick or treaters' who were called 'guisers' in my day. A party piece of a song or joke is usually performed in exchange for sweets, but some of our delightful visitors did not bother with this irksome duty. Others did not even have costumes on and were clearly about 25.

Most of the revellers last night had pumpkin lanterns. When did people stop using turnips? Memories of Hallowe'ens past are always infused with the stink of hot neep.

In the not-so-distant past, Hallowee'n used to be a very special night for young, unmarried women. It was the only night of the year that they could peek into the future and glimpse their future husband.

One tradition was to eat a salt herring before bed in the hope that an apparition of their future spouse would glide into their room with the offer of a glass of water.

In the Orcadian parish of Orphir, hopeful girls took a live coal from the fire, submerged it hissing into water and tucked it under a piece of turf. In the morning, the turf would be broken in half to reveal fibres the colour of the future husband's hair.

Braver lasses used to sit in the barn all night with a sieve and a knife because then (of course), a ghostie of the hubby-to-be would drift past the doorway. Other girls used to go into the fields at night and walk around a corn-rick, arms outspread, expecting to touch the ghostie hand of said h-t-b. Aaaaggghhhh!!!!!!

I don't know about anyone else, but I much prefer today's tradition of sitting in front of the X-factor results show whilst munching upon the excessively large supply of sweets that only the visits of 3300 children could use  up.

Information taken from the Ernest Walker Marwick Collection D31/72/1/26

More sieve information here and here