Also called Saining, Smoke cleansing with juniper and rosemary
A Scottish Highland New Year rite of blessing a house with water and the smoke of burning juniper. It is an open European alternative to white-sage smudging, which belongs to closed Indigenous ceremonial practice.
TraditionScottish Highland folk custom
RegionScotland
Era18th to 19th century, revived today
Moon● New moon
DayAny
ElementFire
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
Time30 minutes
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
The working
Begin early on New Year's morning or at any new moon, with all the household at home.
Walk through each room and sprinkle a few drops of the water in the corners and over the doorways.
Light the juniper over the dish and blow it out so it smoulders rather than flames.
Carry the smoking dish slowly through every room, including the hall and any shed, keeping it over the sand.
Unlike the old rite, keep a window cracked: the historic custom sealed the house until people coughed, which is not safe today.
When the smoke has reached every room, open the doors and windows wide to let the old year out.
Put the embers out fully with water and share a small breakfast or toast with the household.
Take care: Burn only small amounts over sand or in a fireproof dish, never leave smouldering herbs unattended, and keep a window open; do not seal a room with smoke, and keep smoke away from people with asthma, babies and pets. White sage smudging is a closed Indigenous practice, so use juniper or rosemary instead.
Versions across time and place
i
Hogmanay saining with water from the dead and living ford
Scottish Highlands · 19th century
Early on New Year's Day, water was fetched from a ford that both the living and the dead crossed, drunk by the household and sprinkled through the house. Then the doors and windows were shut and juniper burned through house and byre until everyone sneezed and coughed, before the house was opened and a dram taken before breakfast.
Uses: ford water, juniper, whisky
Recorded in: F. Marian McNeill, The Silver Bough, vol. 3 (1961)
ii
Rosemary and juniper in French sickrooms
French hospital custom · Recorded early 20th century
Grieve wrote that French hospitals burned rosemary with juniper berries to purify the air and prevent infection, and that burning rosemary in sickrooms was an old English custom too. It shows the same pair of plants used for cleansing well outside Scotland.
Uses: rosemary, juniper berries
Recorded in: Maud Grieve, A Modern Herbal (1931), entry on rosemary
iii
Saining against the evil eye
Gaelic Scotland · 18th to 19th century
Juniper smoke was also used in healing when a sickness was blamed on the evil eye, alongside charmed water. This use seems to have faded by the end of the nineteenth century while the Hogmanay house saining survived in a few places and has since been revived.
Uses: juniper, charmed water
Recorded in: Summarised in Wikipedia, Saining, from Gaelic folklore sources
History
Saining is a Scots word for blessing or protecting, related to signing with the cross. In the Highlands it covered many small rites: blessing a newborn, a bride, cattle or a house, often with water and fire together. The folklorist F. Marian McNeill gathered accounts of the New Year house saining in her four-volume study The Silver Bough, published between 1957 and 1968.
Many people today look for a smoke-cleansing practice that does not borrow from Indigenous ceremony. White sage smudging is part of the living religious practice of several Native American nations, and wild white sage has been over-harvested for the commercial market. Juniper, rosemary and other plants from one's own region give an open alternative with a documented European history. Ask what grows near you and what your own ancestors burned.
Sources
The Silver Bough, Volume 3 · F. Marian McNeill, 1961
