Kale
Some forms of divination required specialist equipment and training. Others made use of whatever was on hand. There are some eighteenth-century records of rural Scotspeople practising fortune-telling by use of leafy vegetables. A subcategory of divination by nature, this practice was largely folkloric, and was probably practised for fun first and foremost.
In his record of a 1769 tour around Scotland, Thomas Pennant wrote that ‘The young people determine the figure and size of their husbands by drawing cabbages blindfold on All-Hallows Even’.1Thomas Pennant, The Additions to the Quarto Edition of the Tour in Scotland, 1769 (London, 1774), p. 18. This implies that divination by kale was largely practised by young women, though another source – Robert Burns’s 1785 poem ‘Halloween’, extracted below – features a male participant in the ritual.
In Scots, ‘kale’ or ‘kail’ could refer to cabbage of any variety. So important was kale in Scottish food cultivation that the word could be used to signify broth, or food broadly. It also featured in various proverbs. One, recorded in 1584, warned against starting quarrels and ‘scalding your lips on other men’s kale’. Another, noted in 1597, adapted a traditional and widely-quoted adage about using a long spoon to eat with the Devil (so as to keep your distance): ‘They that sup kale with the Devil have need of long spoons’. A third again recalls marriage prospects, contrasting a daydreaming suitor with a cynical maiden: ‘Apples and new ale, said the wooer; drowned mice and cold kale, said the maid’.2Entry for ‘kale’, Dictionary of the Scots Language (1963).
1731 painting by Richard Waitt, possibly of a man playing the role of a jester presiding over Halloween festivities. He holds a stem of kale with a candle inserted to make a torch.3Richard Waitt, The Cromartie Fool (1731), National Galleries of Scotland.
If you don’t have a patch of kale on hand, try playing the video below for a prediction of your romantic fortunes!
Any sort of kale could plausibly be uprooted for divinatory purposes, but we have favoured curly kale, also known as Scotch kale because of its prominence in Scottish cuisine.
Robert Burns’s poem ‘Halloween’ describes a party pulling kale. Unlucky Will draws a stalk as curly as a pig’s tail.4Robert Burns, ‘Halloween’ (1785, first pub. 1786), in The Complete Works of Robert Burns, ed. Alexander Smith (London, 1868), pp. 44-7.
Then, first and foremost, through the kail,
Their stocks maun a’ be sought ance;
They steek their een, and graip and wale,
For muckle anes and straught anes.
Poor hav’rel [fellow] Will fell aff the drift,
And wander’d through the bow-kail,
And pou’t [pulled], for want o’ better shift,
A runt was like a sow-tail,
Sae bow’t [bent] that night.
Then, staught or crooked, yird or nane,
They roar and cry a’ throu’ther;
The very wee things, todlin’, rin,
Wi’ stocks out owre their shouther;
And gif the custoc’s sweet or sour.
Wi’ joctelegs they taste them;
Syne cozily, aboon the door,
Wi cannie care, they’ve placed them
To lie that night.
Postcard by the American illustrator Ellen Clapsaddle (1865-1934).5William H. Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University.
Extract from Burns’s explanatory notes for ‘Halloween’.6Robert Burns, ‘Halloween’ (1785, first pub. 1786), in The Complete Works of Robert Burns, ed. Alexander Smith (London, 1868), p. 44.
The first ceremony of Halloween is pulling each a stock, or plant of kail. They must go out, hand in hand, with eyes shut, and pull the first they meet with. Its being big or little, straight or crooked, is prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their spells – the husband or wife. If any yird, or earth, stick to the root, that is tocher, or fortune; and the taste of the custock, that is, the heart of the stem, is indicative of the natural temper and disposition. Lastly, the stems, or, to give them their ordinary appellation, the runts, are placed somewhere above the head of the door; and the Christian names of the people whom chance brings into the house, are, according to the priority of placing the runts, the names in question.
