Snap Apple Night, or All-Hallow Eve
After Daniel Maclise Irish
Engraver James Scott British
Publisher Henry Graves & Co. British
Not on view
In October 1832 Daniel Maclise attended a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland and, the next summer, exhibited a painting at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, titled "Snap Apple Night, or All Hallow Eve." The catalogue included the following verse which indicates how the game being played was believed to predict the romantic futures of the participants:
“There Peggy was dancing with Dan
While Maureen the lead was melting,
To prove how their fortunes ran
With the Cards could Nancy dealt in;
There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will,
In nuts their true-love burning,
And poor Norah, though smiling still
She'd missed the snap-apple turning."
(On the Festival of Hallow Eve, 1833)
Young and old are shown in an interior, with many playing games. At the center a man tries to bite into a suspended apple (the snap-apple of the title), as boys bob for apples at right. Taking place on All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween, the adult game was thought to predict who next would marry.
In 1845 James Scott's engraving of Maclise’s painting was published in London by Henry Graves & Co.
In 1853, the New York Publisher Currier & Ives based a lithograph on Scott’s engraving.
