[1] Dr. Wilson Armitage is the author of Latin: A Comprehensive Study of the Language, now in its ninth edition.
[2] “The Coming of Finn”
[3] “The Story of Nera”
[4] “The Story of Oengus”
[5] http://www.churchesofchrist.net/authors/Walter_Porter/Halloween.htm
[6] Mongfind is a legendary sorceress and warrior queen who supposedly died one Samhain when she ingested poison meant for her brother.
[7] In a famous letter from 601 A.D., Pope Gregory (later known as Gregory the Great) instructed the Abbot Mellitus, who was then bound for Britain, to leave pagan temples standing, because “if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God.”
[8] May 13th had probably been chosen as the original date for All Saints Day because it had marked the climax of Lemuria, a Roman festival honoring the dead.
[9] The Conquest of Gaul
[10] Abbot Jerome is apparently lost to history. Strangely enough, the timing—mid-4th-century—coincides with the life of St. Jerome, an early church father who was involved with translations of the Old Testament from the Hebrew; however, it seems extremely unlikely that St. Jerome ever journeyed as far north as Great Britain and Ireland, so this is evidently another Jerome. It’s also worth noting that Mongfind’s journal contains no mention of Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick…but then it would be unlikely to find Patrick in her journal, since he historically appears in Ireland almost a century later. Perhaps Patrick was always intended to be sent in as a sort of compassionate, unifying figure after the horrors of the earlier missionaries.
[11] In Celtic religion, the Dagda and the Morrigan are basically the father and mother gods (respectively). They were thought to couple at Samhain to ensure fertility for the next year’s crops and livestock, and they figure prominently in a number of existing Samhain legends (the Morrigan, for example, was also a warrior who, together with her son Oengus, drove the monstrous Fomorians from Ireland one Samhain).
[12] In the Celtic calendar, Beltane— which takes place on May Eve, exactly six months apart from Samhain, or Halloween—was the great spring/summer counterpart to the fall/winter holiday.
[13] “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” from Monsters of L.A.
[14] I’m not including the actual chant here because…well, even though it can supposedly be performed only by a Druid priest or priestess of the highest level; let’s just say I nonetheless have some safety concerns. Don’t try this at home, in other words.
[15] The previous chapter was exactly what I found on my computer.
[16] Mainly in the mid-nineteenth century, after the Great Potato Famine devastated the food supply in Ireland.
[17] The Samhanach (2010) and Hell Manor (2012)
[18] According to Celtic mythology, Tara was the ancient seat of kings.
[19] Thousand Oaks is a suburb to the west of the San Fernando Valley, about forty minutes from Los Angeles.
[20] “Blind-stamped”, from Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores
[21] I confess I’ve written more zombie fiction than I care to list here.