Matters being thus settled, the neighbourhood rung with the praises of the gallant deed of the lord of Chetwode, and the news thereof soon reached the ears of the king, who “liked him so well of the achievement,” that he forthwith made the knight tenant _in capite_, and constituted his manor paramount of all the manors within the limits and extent of the royal forest of Rookwoode. Moreover, he granted to him, and to his heirs for ever, among other immunities and privileges, the full right and power to levy every year the “Rhyne Toll,” which has already been described. Such a custom as the “Rhyne Toll” is not without its use. It is a perpetual memorial, perhaps more convincing than written history, of the dangers which surrounded our ancestors, and from which our country has happily been so long delivered that we can now scarcely believe they ever existed.--_The Book of Days_, vol. ii. pp. 517-519. OCT. 31.] HALLOW EVE. This eve is so called from being the vigil of All Saints’ Day, and is the season for a variety of superstitious and other customs. In the north of England many of these still linger. One of the most common is that of diving for apples, or of catching at them with the mouth only, the hands being tied behind, and the apples suspended on one end of a long transverse beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle. The fruit and nuts form the most prominent parts of the evening feast, and from this circumstance the night has been termed _Nutcrack Night_.[79]--Soane’s _Book of the Months_, 1849, vol. ii. p. 215; see _Book of Days_, vol. ii. pp. 519-520. [79] See Michaelmas Eve, p. 375. Sir William Dugdale (_Life, Diary, and Correspondence of Sir W. Dugdale_, _edited by_ W. Hamper, 1827, p. 104) tells us that formerly, on Halloween, the master of the family used to carry a bunch of straw, fired, about his corn, saying: “Fire and red low Light on my teen now.” This fire-straw, says a correspondent of _N. & Q._ (_3rd S._ vol. i. p. 316), was meant to ward off witchcraft, and so preserve the corn from being spoiled. In Scotland, on Halloween, the red end of a fiery stick is waved about in mystic figures in the air to accomplish for the person the same spell. Red appears to be a colour peculiarly obnoxious to witches. One Halloween rhyme enjoins the employment of: “Rowan tree and red thread, To gar the witches dance their dead;” i.e., dance till they fall down and expire. The berries of the rowan-tree (mountain-ash) are of a brilliant red. The point of the fiery stick waved rapidly takes the appearance of a “red thread.” CORNWALL.