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and November Eve:
Halloween in the British Isles
By the sixteenth century, Halloween – meaning the evening of 31 October, observed separately from All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, Guy Fawkes Day/Bonfire Night and Martinmas – was starting to creep into both folklore and the calendar of festivals observed throughout the British Isles. In areas where Celtic influence was still strong – mainly Ireland and Scotland – the festival continued to grow in popularity. Scotland especially clung to the night’s aura of romance and ghostly doings, and the earliest mentions of Halloween in poetry all emanate from Scotland. The classic Scottish ballad ‘Tamlane’ was first recorded in 1548, and relates the romantic and eerie story of Janet, a lass who becomes pregnant by Tamlane, a young man stolen by the fairies; Janet can rescue him only on Halloween night, provided she’s able to hold onto him no matter what strange and frightening transformation the fairy queen puts the young man through. In 1584, Alexander Montgomerie penned the whimsical ‘Montgomeries Answere to Polwart’, which includes these famous lines:
In the hinder end of harvest, on Allhallow even,
When our good neighbours do ride, if I read right,
Some buckled on a bunwand, and some on a bone
And trotting in troops from the twilight . . . 1
Just over two centuries later, the works of Sir Walter Scott would reveal much about the morbid imagination of the Scots. In his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–3), Scott collected ballads (including ‘Tamlane’), and in the lengthy introduction he notes the superstitious nature of the Highlanders and border clans, who believed in fairies and witches, carried spell-books and thought charms had the power to cure disease.2 Scott’s own work included references to Halloween too. In his novel The Monastery, there are mentions of Halloween fortune-telling, encountering fetches (or the apparitions of those not yet dead), and ‘second sight’: ‘They that are born on Hallowe’en whiles see mair than ither folk.’3 Scott’s novel Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since (1814) recounts the curious legend of ‘St Swithin’s Chair’ when one of his characters sings a song that is set on ‘Hallow-mass Eve’ and describes a fortune-telling custom centring on a real outcrop of rock:
‘Allison Gross’, from The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (London, 1886).
He that dare sit on Saint Swithin’s Chair,
When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
He may ask, and she must tell.4
Another traditional Scottish ballad that probably dates from around the time of ‘Tamlane’ is ‘Alison Gross’, which once again involves a young man and a fairy queen but this time puts them in very different circumstances. At the beginning of the piece, the young man is held captive by the title character, ‘the ugliest witch in the north countrie’. After she’s unsuccessful at buying the young man’s affections with a variety of enchanted gifts, she turns him into a snake and leaves him to ‘toddle about the tree’. However, on Halloween night, the ‘Seely Court’, or fairies, ride by, and the queen discovers the young man; she strokes him three times, and he returns to his proper form.5 ‘Alison Gross’ holds the distinction of being the only traditional Halloween tale in which a fairy undoes the work of a witch.
Thomas Hardy wrote eloquently about the fascination of bonfires in his novel The Return of the Native (1878); he described them as ‘Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies’, and said that ‘to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature’.6 Hardy was actually describing Guy Fawkes Day fires, but bonfires have been just as important to the history of Halloween. In the popular imagination, bonfires have descended in a direct line from the Celts. This excerpt from a magazine article of 1881 gives some notion of how the Celts had been romanticized:
The Druids built fires on the hill-tops in France, Britain, and Ireland, in honor of the sun. At this last festival the Druids of all the region gathered in their white robes around the stone altar or cairn on the hill-top. Here stood an emblem of the sun, and on the cairn was the sacred fire, which had been kept burning through the year. The Druids formed about the fire, and, at a signal, quenched it, while deep silence rested on the mountains and valleys. Then the new fire gleamed on the cairn, the people in the valley raised a joyous shout, and from hill-top to hill-top other fires answered the sacred flame.7
While this is obviously a fanciful scene, it is likely that Halloween bonfire traditions can be traced back at least to the Celtic New Year’s ritual of extinguishing all fires and relighting them with an ember from a special fire kindled by the Druids.
Bonfires have an interesting history in general, beginning with the word itself, which is probably a derivation of ‘bone-fire’ and dates back to the burning of the bones of St John the Baptist by the Roman Emperor Julian in the fourth century AD. In AD 680, the Catholic Church attempted to abolish the practice of bonfires, and in 742 they condemned the practice of using ‘needfire’ (friction) to spark kindling. Obviously they were unsuccessful in their attempts, because the making of bonfires at a number of festivals, especially May Eve, Midsummer Eve and Halloween, continued throughout the centuries.
Bonfires at Halloween once served an actual purpose by getting rid of the refuse left over from the harvest, but, as previously mentioned, eventually the practice came to involve begging for firewood, mainly on the part of children. In Scotland, the fires were called samhnag, and could be seen on every hilltop on Halloween night. One of the most famous descriptions of a Scottish Halloween bonfire comes from the Englishman Thomas Pennant, who kept extensive journals of his travels and recorded this scene in 1772:
Hallow eve is also kept sacred: as soon as it is dark, a person sets fire to a bush of broom fastened round a pole; and, attended with a crowd, runs round the village. He then flings it down, keeps great quantity of combustible matters in it, and makes a great bonfire. A whole tract is thus illuminated at the same time, and makes a fine appearance.8
Occasionally, Halloween bonfires were thought to serve specific purposes. In Northern England, bonfires were lit on All Souls’ Eve (rather than Halloween) to light the way for souls out of Purgatory. These fires were sometimes called ‘tindles’ or ‘teanloes’, and Halloween was even referred to as ‘Teanlay’ in this district in honour of the bonfires. Another fire custom invoking that realm between Heaven and Hell was set in a Lancashire field actually named Purgatory Field; men assembled there at midnight on Halloween and tossed forkfuls of burning straw into the air while praying for souls in Purgatory. In an interview conducted in 1944, an Irish native discussed All Souls’ Eve in terms of Purgatory:
The night of the 1st–2nd November is known as oiche Feil na Marg – ‘All Souls’ Eve’. It is believed that the dead whose souls are in Purgatory are permitted to return to the ancestral home on that night. In most houses the door is left on the latch [unlocked], a good fire is kept burning all night . . . the members of the household say the family rosary and go early to bed . . . in order to leave the departed souls in undisturbed possession of the fireside.9
In some areas, fires were lit to protect against witches and malicious fairies. In Scotland, boys might beg for firewood in order to ‘burn the witches’, who might also be burned in effigy (Queen Victoria witnessed this practice during her 1869 visit to Balmoral Castle). In Lancashire, witches were thought to assemble on Halloween in the Forest of Pendle at a ruined farmhouse called the Malkin Tower. Rather than creating bonfires, fearful residents practiced ‘leeting’ or ‘lating’ the witches:
It was believed that if a lighted candle were carried about the fells or hills from eleven to twelve o’ clock at night, and burned all that time steadily, it had so far triumphed over the evil power of the witches, who as they passed to the Malkin Tower, would employ their utmost efforts to extinguish the light, and the person whom it represented might safely defy their malice during the season; but if, by any accident the candle went out, it was an omen of evil to the luckless wight for whom the experiment was made.10
The province of Moray was said to hold ‘a solemnity for the safe in-gathering of the produce of the fields’ by lighting bonfires.11 From Perthshire comes this eyewitness account of a spectacular fire tradition:
On the evening of the 31st of October . . . one remarkable cere mony is observed. Heath, broom, and dressings of flax, are tied upon a pole. This faggot is then kindled. One takes it upon his shoulders; and, running, bears it round the village. A crowd attend. When the first faggot is burnt out, a second is bound to the pole, and kindled in the same manner as before. Numbers of these blazing faggots are often carried about together, and when the night happens to be dark, they form a splendid illumination. This is Halloween, and is a night of great festivity.12
The practice of bonfires began to die out in Britain by the end of the nineteenth century, in part because (as noted earlier) there was simply nothing left to burn, but also because of the dangers posed by bonfires to spectators – and by spectators to other spectators. James Napier, writing in 1879 about a Halloween spent watching boys build bonfires around Loch Tay in Scotland, noted:
I was told by old men that at the beginning of this century men as well as boys took part in getting up the bonfires, and that, when the fire was ablaze, all joined hands and danced round the fire, and made a great noise; but that, as these gatherings generally ended in drunkenness and rough and dangerous fun, the ministers set their faces against the observance, and were seconded in their efforts by the more intelligent and well-behaved in the community; and so the practice was discontinued by adults and relegated to school boys.13
While the Halloween bonfire may have been popular, it was soon rivalled and bested by the popularity of Halloween fortune-telling rituals, and certainly no bard captured the spirit of the Scottish Halloween prophecy customs better than Robert Burns. Burns, who is sometimes referred to as ‘Scotland’s Favourite Son’, would none the less become most well-known for penning the poem ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which has become something of an anthem for another holiday, New Year’s Eve (or the Scottish New Year celebration Hogmanay). However, it’s Burns’s poem ‘Hallowe’en’ of 1785 that provides a far more revealing look at the traditional festival. In 252 lines, Burns describes some of the legendary background of the holiday (‘Upon that night, when fairies light’), the favoured foods (‘butter’d so’ns’ – sowens is similar to oatmeal) and, especially, the games and fortune-telling rituals.14
Whom Will I Marry? Halloween Fortune-telling
It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when fortune-telling games became an integral part of Halloween festivities; most later accounts of them simply refer back to the Burns poem, which suggests that fortune-telling rituals were already well-established and linked to Halloween. John Gay’s ‘mock pastoral’ poetic work The Shepherd’s Week of 1714 includes some of the same fortune-telling methods, especially the burning of nuts,15 but makes no mention of Halloween, although it mentions other festivals, such as May Day. Indeed, many of the fortune-telling methods later associated with Halloween have earlier connections to other celebrations, including Midsummer’s Eve, St Agnes’ Eve, Christmas and New Years’. It seems likely that many of these rituals migrated to Scottish Halloween some time in the eighteenth century, since the day’s history lent itself well to these slightly pagan practices.
The vast majority of these fortune-telling games were dedicated to learning the nature of one’s future spouse – either by name, character or profession – since marriage was probably the most important event in the life of a rural, pre-industrial young person. These rituals, so indelibly described by Burns and carried down all the way to the early twentieth century, undoubtedly left a romantic mark on Halloween forever.
In the Burns poem, the ‘merry, friendly, countra folk’ begin the evening by venturing into the kale field to pull stalks. This is possibly the most popular of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fortune-telling games, and was performed in Ireland with cabbages. There are numerous variations of this ritual – in some the fortune-seeker must enter the field backwards or blindfolded – but all involve examining the stalk to determine the nature of one’s future spouse. In the Burns poem, both the shape of the stalk – ‘muckle anes an’ straught anes’ – and the taste – ‘sweet or sour’ – will reveal the beloved’s character. The kale stalk might also have been nailed up over the main doorway in the belief that the first young person to enter beneath would be the future spouse (or would at least bear the initials of said spouse). This activity was so popular that it was frequently referred to simply as ‘kaling’.
Next up in the Burns poem is the bawdy custom of young ladies pulling ‘corn’ (in fact, oats); three stalks are pulled, and if the third should lack the grain at the top, the girl will not enter into marriage as a virgin. Burns has particular fun with this stanza, suggesting that Nelly loses her ‘tap-pickle’ to Rob while practicing this very custom.
The next four stanzas are devoted to burning nuts. Here’s how Gay described the practice in the ‘Thursday’ section of The Shepherd’s Week:
Two hazel-nuts I threw into the flame
And to each nut I gave a sweet-heart’s name.16
The nut that blazed brightest and longest indicated the truest lover. In ‘Hallowe’en’, however, the two nuts are named for the lovers, and depending on whether they burn together to ash or jump away from each other, so will the relationship progress.
Next, Burns introduces Merran, who retires to the lime-kiln (a large brick structure used for producing quicklime and a common fixture on eighteenth-century farms) for a custom involving blue yarn. In the classic version of this fortune-telling stunt, the girl threw her clew (or ball) into the kiln and would soon feel something tugging on the yarn, at which point she cried out, ‘Who holds?’ She would then hear the name of her future husband, which – needless to say – was likely uttered by the hidden boy himself. This particular fortune-telling method was especially subject to pranking, as in this example quoted by John Gregorson Campbell in Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland:
There is a story of a tailor having hid himself in anticipation of this mode of divination being resorted to, and when the ball was thrown he caught it and gave the thread a tug. In answer to the question ‘who is this at the end of my little rope?’ he said, ‘I am the devil’ . . . and the woman to whom this frightful answer was given never tried divination again.17
Burns briefly mentions a method that was popular even into the twentieth century in which a curious young lady would stand before a mirror on Halloween night with an apple and, after either eating it or slicing it into sections, would see the face of her beloved reflected in the glass. In her collection of Irish legends, Lady Jane Wilde recounts this frightening result from someone who performed this ritual on Halloween night:
A lady narrates that on the 1st of November her servant rushed into the room and fainted on the floor. On recovering, she said that she had played a trick that night in the name of the devil before the looking-glass; but what she had seen she dared not speak of, though the remembrance of it would never leave her brain, and she knew the shock would kill her. They tried to laugh her out of her fears, but the next night she was found quite dead, with her features horribly contorted, lying on the floor before the looking-glass, which was shivered to pieces.18
In ‘Hallowe’en’, Grannie warns little Jenny that ‘Nae doubt but ye may get a sight!’ and recounts a frightful story from her own youth involving the sowing of hemp seed. In this divination, the fortune-seeker went into a hemp field, sowed seed behind him or her, and recited a small rhyme, which Burns gives as:
Hemp seed I saw thee,
Hemp seed I saw thee;
And him (or her) that is to be my true-love,
Come after me and pou thee.19
The Devil waits behind the Halloween mirror: ‘All Hallows Eve’ by Mme Boulanger, engraved by A. H. Putchie.
Burns offers an amusing twist to this ritual, when the seeker, a bold young man named Jamie Fleck, is startled by the sudden appearance of a pig.
Many of these classic Halloween divinations involved belief in the ‘wraith’ or ‘fetch’, which was essentially the spirit of someone not yet dead. Invisible spirits attached to each person, wraiths could occasionally separate themselves and become visible to others. Scottish folklore expert James Napier, when discussing the wraith, mentions the biblical story of Peter knocking on the door of a house while he was in prison, and also the classic Scottish song ‘Auld Robin Gray’, in which a woman meeting her old sweetheart exclaims, ‘I thought it was his wraith’.20 In Ireland, this supernatural double was called a fetch, and was believed to foretell good tidings if seen in the morning, but death if glimpsed in the afternoon or evening. The fetch was usually believed to represent someone suffering from a prolonged illness, but on Halloween it appeared as a prophecy of marriage. In his article ‘Hallowe’en: A Three-fold Chronicle’ of 1886, William Sharp describes a magical encounter told to him by a resident of Perthshire: at fourteen, a young lady named Madge Falconer fell in love with her seventeen-year-old neighbour Ralph Morgan. Before they were both old enough to wed, however, Ralph moved to India, and Madge didn’t see him for nearly seven years. On the Halloween, just before her twenty-first birthday, she tried the looking-glass prognostication, and beheld not Ralph but an older man with a particular scar. She moved to India shortly thereafter, met again with Ralph, but soon realized she was no longer in love with him. Not long after she met a man named Major Colville and recognized his as the face she’d seen on Halloween, complete with the scar he had taken during a battle with Sikhs. She and Colville were soon married.21
Burns’s Jamie Fleck meets the sow in this postcard.
One of the most fearsome examples of a custom involving a wraith is recounted in the Burns work when Meg heads to the barn ‘To win three wechts o’ naething.’ In this fortune-telling ritual, the seeker went to a barn and opened both doors (preferably removing them from their hinges, lest they close on their own and seal the victim in with a menacing spirit), took down the wecht, or the instrument used in winnowing corn, and pantomimed the act of separating corn from chaff three times. At the completion of this task, a spectre bearing the appearance of one’s future intended would pass through the barn. The fortune-seeker must perform all of this after calling on the Devil, which no doubt gave Halloween a particularly sinister air.
Stacks of barley figured into a fortune-telling method referred to as ‘fadomin’ da skroo’: the fortune-seeker went blindfolded three times around a stack of barley (some variants of this tradition specify that it must be done ‘widdershins’, meaning ‘against the sun’ or anticlockwise), and at the end of the last turn would embrace the future beloved. In the Burns poem, young Will attempts this, but is unaware that he actually walked three times around a stack of timber by mistake; he is startled when he comes face-to-face with a rotted piece of oak that he mistakes for an aged woman.
Many of the now obsolete fortune-telling rituals involved water, but perhaps none was as popular as ‘the dipping of the sark sleeve’. Burns says this must be performed ‘whare three lairds’ lands meet at a burn’, and at that point a young woman would dip her sleeve into the water, then return home to set the shirt to dry by the hearth-fire. The lass would then retire to bed, and during the night would see her intended enter the room and turn the shirt, so that the other side would dry as well. Of course Burns once again shows Halloween as a night of playful scares when his lady is startled by a sound (which could be either the Devil or a bird) and plunges into the water.
A real account of late eighteenth-century sleeve-dipping illustrates, however, that Halloween fortune-telling wasn’t always considered an innocent game. Records from Eastwood relate the confession of a woman who had used charms at Halloween and who said that,
at the instigation of an old woman from Ireland, she brought in a pint of water from a well which brides and burials pass over, and dipt her shirt into it, and hung it before the fire; that she either dreamed, or else there came something and turned about the chair on which her shirt was, but she could not well see what it was. Her sentence was a rebuke before the congregation.22
Another ritual involving water was referred to as the luggie bowls. ‘Luggies’ are small bowls with handles (‘lugs’). In this tradition, three of them would be filled with different substances and arrayed before a blindfolded fortune-seeker, whose future was foretold by whether he touched the dish of clean water (marriage to a virgin), dirty water (marriage to a widow) or nothing (no marriage would occur). The luggie bowls are one of the most common of all Halloween games, and there are dozens of variants; in some, the bowls hold not water but objects (a thimble, for example, symbolizes spinsterhood). The number of bowls might be as high as six, or the game might be played without using bowls at all. A nineteenth-century version instructed that three tin cups partially full of water should be placed on the small ends of three funnels, which would be set up in a line on the floor. The young ladies should then take turns at leaping over each of these constructions, with the number of cups knocked over dictating the time until marriage would take place (in the case of an unlucky miss who caught her skirts on all three cups, she would remain single).
The luggie bowls figure prominently in James Joyce’s poignant Halloween story ‘Clay’. Published in 1914, ‘Clay’ describes an urban Irish Halloween party, and centres on the tragedy of Maria, an unmarried woman who first touches the dish of clay (an early death), and then the prayer-book (a life devoted to God, not a husband). In Burns’s poem, a similar twist is played for humour: when Uncle John touches the empty dish three times in a row, signifying a life as a single man, he’s so infuriated that he hurls the three bowls into the fire.
Fortune-telling games were also being played in Ireland during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, but door-to-door begging figured even more prominently. Prognostication involving cabbage-pulling, nut-burning, sowing of hemp seed, lime kilns and dipping the sleeve in water are all recorded, but so is a begging ritual practiced in honor of St Columba, a sixth-century missionary who converted many Irish and Scottish pagans. Columba – or ‘Colum Kill’, as he came to be known by the 1700s – was invoked by Irish peasants who went door to door demanding money to buy ‘fatted calves and black sheep’ for a feast in the saint’s name.
Another Irish Halloween costuming ritual was presented by the ‘Strawboys’, a group of young men dressed in distinctive suits made of white straw and tall, conical hats, who engaged in wild pranking and petty vandalism (especially stealing food) directed mainly at families who kept their daughters from the company of boys. The Strawboys also appeared at weddings, where they would demand a dance with the bride, and this tradition has continued into modern times. Some Irish wedding planners, in fact, offer an appearance by the Strawboys as an optional paid extra.
In Northern Ireland, door-to-door Halloween rhyming occurs for several weeks prior to the actual night of Halloween. Young people may beg at the same houses several times, and may receive money, which they use to buy fireworks. The fireworks are likewise set off throughout this period, while 31 October is reserved for bonfires and family dinners.
A similar, though even stranger, tradition is recorded in the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland. There, a group of young men called the Grülacks, dressed in exotic costumes ornamented with coloured ribbons, tall hats and veils, paid surprise visits to houses on Halloween, demanding food and liquor. Their arrival was announced by firing a shot over the house, and the homeowner had to fire a welcoming round before they would enter. They would file into the kitchen, led by a character called ‘the skuddler’, and bang long sticks on the floor until they were offered food; they also were usually accompanied by a fiddler, and would present some sort of performance before leaving. Like the Strawboys, the Grülacks were also a popular fixture at weddings, and by the twentieth century they were associated almost exclusively with weddings and Christmas.
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Fairies, Pookas and Witches
Both the Scottish and the Irish had a considerable amount of folklore centred on fairies, or sidh, and Halloween appears frequently in this lore. The fact that belief in fairies was found primarily among the descendants of the Celts lends credence to the theory that the fairies are the old gods reduced to small, supernatural imps by Christianity; however, in some fairy stories, the fairies also seem to be connected to the spirits of the dead. Lady Wilde, for instance, recorded a traditional Irish story called ‘November Eve’ in which a fisherman named Hugh King stays out too late on Halloween, and encounters a large band of merrymakers who tell him they are bound for a fair. Hugh accompanies them, meets Finvarra, the king of the fairies, and then is pulled into a dance by the spirit of a dead woman. Hugh survives the dreadful night, but in the morning realizes that the fairies mocked and taunted him because he ignored warnings to stay inside on Halloween night.
The fairies were thought to live within the grassy hillocks that dotted the landscapes of Ireland and Scotland, and only on Halloween might these fairy raths open to mortals. One Scottish belief had it that a mortal who walked nine times in an anticlockwise direction around one of the sidh-mounds on Halloween night would be admitted to the fairy realm, where he would experience the pleasures of that world; however, he would be unable to return to his mortal existence, and would become forever a shi ich, or ‘man of peace’. Fairies might also choose to leave their barrows and visit mortals: a passage from a fifteenth-century historical text called The Book of Fermoy relates the story of Fingen mac Luchta, King of Munster in the third century, who was visited on Samhain night by Bacht, a fairy woman, who told him of 50 wonders.
Usually the fairies were not so kindly disposed towards humans. In The Golden Bough (1922), Sir James Frazer relates a Scottish yarn of two young men who, on Halloween night, encountered a brightly lit house full of jigging merrymakers; one of the young men immediately entered and joined in the fun, but the other suspected that the ‘house’ might actually be a fairy knoll. This young man took the precaution of placing a needle in the doorway before entering, and thus disarmed the power of the fairies and escaped safely. His companion, however, was trapped in the fairy rath for a year, and when Halloween came around again he was found still dancing before he collapsed into a pile of bones.
In Northern Ireland, families were cautious about allowing children out on Halloween night because of fairies well into the early twentieth century. If a child set foot on ben-weed on Halloween night, he or she was certain to be carried off by the ‘little people’. For protection, parents might rub a mixture of dry oatmeal and salt into the hair of any child venturing out on Halloween night. Babies were also at risk, since fairies might steal the infant and replace it with a ‘stock’, or fairy child. The stock sometimes had the appearance of a tiny, old, bearded man who never aged; or the baby might appear normal, but would soon sicken and die. A baby could be protected on Halloween night by placing something made of iron in or over its crib. A fairy child might be detected by boiling eggshells in its presence; this would cause the tot to utter an adult exclamation and thus give away its true nature.
The mischievous ‘good people’ (this euphemism was spoken in order to not risk offending the fairies) were also fond of carrying off attractive adult humans, who could usually only be rescued on Halloween. The ballad of Tamlane is the classic example of this, but Sir Walter Scott also records (in his introduction to ‘Tamlane’) the tale of a Lothian farmer whose wife was stolen by fairies, and who appeared to him repeatedly for a year after her kidnapping, telling him how to rescue her come Halloween night. However, when the fateful evening arrived, the farmer was so frightened by the ‘wild unearthly sound’ of the fairy troupe that he was paralysed, and could only stand helplessly listening to the mournful cries of his wife as she passed him by one last time before being lost forever.
Brave humans might use the Halloween power of fairies for their own ends. In the Irish legend of ‘Guleesh Na Guss Dhu’, an abused young man named Guleesh joins the fairies on Halloween night on a magical ride to France, where the fairies beg Guleesh’s help in kidnapping a beautiful princess before her wedding. Guleesh agrees, but first demands to be taken to Rome, where the fairies assist him in forcing the Pope to reinstate Guleesh’s parish priest. In France, Guleesh and the fairies successfully make off with the girl and return to Ireland, but Guleesh decides to keep the princess for himself. The fairies curse the princess, removing her power of speech, but on the following Halloween, Guleesh overhears some of the fairies describing a cure for the princess’s affliction, and is thus able to banish the curse. He and the princess are then married.
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Fairies emerge from their barrow on Halloween night in this postcard of 1912. |
One of the most curious Scottish Halloween creatures was found on Lewis, an island in the Outer Hebrides. On Halloween night, families assembled at the church of St Mulway, where each provided a bag of malt that was brewed into ale. One man was then chosen to wade into the sea with a cup of this ale, at which point he recited: ‘Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you’ll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware [seaweed], for enriching our ground the ensuing year.’23 After hurling the ale into the sea, the man waded back to shore and the entire assemblage returned to the church, where they spent a few solemn moments in con templation of a candle. When the candle was extinguished, the remainder of the night was devoted to drinking the ale and dancing in the fields. The origin of the name ‘Shony’ has been lost in history, although it may be derived from ‘Seonaidh’, the Scottish Gaelic version of ‘Johnny’, suggesting that this ritual is actually honouring one of the Christian saints named John.
Some of the grimmest of Halloween beliefs were found among the Welsh, and the Welsh continued to observe the day for longer than their English neighbours. A book of 1849 notes the Welsh fondness for festivals and offers some insight into why Halloween was more beloved by members of the working class:
Old festival days, with their games and merriment, superstitions and legends, which have gone or are fast going into forgetfulness in England, are still important and still observed in Wales. All-Hallows’ Eve, so famous in Scottish and Irish story, is here no less celebrated, and its customs no less kept. It is the people of the locality and the soil, who are not worn into the smoothness of general society by intercourse with large towns, that devote themselves to these observances; and thus the labourers and the old women of the village are they particularly who expect and keep Hollantide.24
Halloween’s name in Wales was Nos Calan Gaeaf, which meant ‘night of the winter calends’, although the Welsh also considered Halloween the most unearthly of the Teir Nos Ysbrydion, or ‘Three Spirit Nights’ (the other two were May Eve and Midsummer’s Eve). On those three nights, the spirits of those who had drowned might surface once again, riding white horses atop the waves. A typical nineteenth-century Welsh Halloween party might include such ordinary diversions as bobbing for apples, snap-apple and fortune-telling games, such as burning nuts on the hearth – but the way the nuts blazed determined whether those who had tossed them into the flames would still be alive next Halloween, not whom they were likely to marry. The Welsh were believers in the custom of the church porch, in which those who were brave enough to stand by the church windows at midnight on Halloween might hear a sermon delivered by Satan in which he would reveal the names of all those from the parish who would die during the coming year; of course, the listener ran the risk of hearing his or her own name spoken. In another version of this belief, the curious were instructed to hide in the churchyard on Halloween night; at midnight they would witness a procession of all those in the parish who would die in the coming year, although any member of the procession who abruptly turned back indicated someone who would suffer a serious illness but recover. Welsh women also gathered in churches on Halloween, believing they could read fates there from flickering candle flames.
The Welsh called fairies tylweth teg, and had many stories about supernatural occurrences on Halloween. One begins with a hiring fair on Halloween, when a kindly older couple hire a lovely young serving girl to work for them. The girl disappears after a time, and a year later the wife is called one night to serve as midwife. She is taken to a fairy hillock, where she sees the most beautiful room she has ever visited; however, upon accidentally rubbing a fairy potion into one eye, she realizes the new mother is her former servant girl, and the room is actually little more than a cave. The serving girl’s fairy husband puts the wife’s anointed eye out with a stick.
Welsh belief in witches and other superstitions also ran strong. They believed that as long as consecrated bells rang they were protected from witches on Halloween; bwyd cennad y meirw was food left out for the dead on Halloween; wind blowing over the feet of corpses on Halloween would create a sighing sound that predicted death to any who heard it; one could also listen to the wind in a crossroads on Halloween night to receive omens of the coming year; hearing crows around a house on Halloween meant that someone in the house would soon die; and at Maes-Y-Felin Field anyone who went to the ancient ruins known as the ‘Druidical stones’ and whispered a wish to them would find that wish coming true during the following year.
The Welsh word pwca (goblin) led to the word ‘pooka’ or ‘puca’, a malicious fairy or demonic creature that appeared in folklore from all over the British Isles. The pooka was a shape-shifter who was seen on Halloween night in the form of a horse; if it was a ‘water-horse’ that arose from a loch or other body of water, it would make a splendid steed if captured, but could also rip apart those who approached it. In Scotland, they told the story of the each-uisg, or water-horse, that lived in Loch Dorch; one Halloween, a foolish young girl decided to try the Halloween fortune-telling custom of dipping her sleeve in water, and vanished forever, leaving behind only her screams in the night and shreds of clothing found next morning near a hoof-print. The name ‘pooka’ also led to ‘Puck’, who of course featured as the lead mischievous sprite in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The Welsh had their own Halloween bonfire ritual as well. Called coel coeth, the literal translation of which means ‘an omen of danger’, the bonfire was built on Halloween by a family on a prominence near their house. Each family member made a mark on a white stone which was then thrown into the fire; on the following morning, any stone that couldn’t be found foretold the death of its owner within the year. Young people also cast nuts into the bonfire, and when the nuts burst or shot out, they fled in terror of ‘the goblin black-tailed sow’ (the Hwch du gwta) who was thought to be abroad on Halloween.
The Welsh weren’t all about death and goblins, however; they also believed in the Halloween fetch who might reveal the identity of a future spouse. In one tradition, young women assembled before midnight around a dining table, and turned all the silverware upsidedown; at midnight, they might see their intended enter to turn everything to rights again. One Welsh woman who recounted this custom added an interesting twist to the lore of the fetch: she did indeed claim to have witnessed the apparition of a man entering to turn the silverware, but none of the other three women with her saw a thing. A short time later, she met the man in person for the first time, and they were soon married.
Foods, Fairs and Other British Traditions
Halloween had a number of its own food traditions, many of which have continued to the present day. Certainly no food is more identified with Halloween in all of its various times and locations than the apple. The association of the apple and Halloween likely dates back to the Celts; although we have no specific connections drawn between Samhain and apples, apples certainly abound in every other part of Celtic mythology. The mythic trees of the divine island Elysium grew three fruits: apples, acorns and nuts. In the tragic story of star-crossed lovers Ailinn and Baile, an apple tree grew from Ailinn’s grave and the apples bore the face of her beloved Baile. The chief god (and father of hero Angus Og) the Dagda lived in a kingdom where there were always apple trees in fruit, to say nothing of a neverending supply of ale. In the epic ‘Voyages of Maildun’, the eponymous hero feeds his starving crew at one point when he encounters an island with a magical apple tree whose fruits supply the sailors for 40 days and nights. There has even been some speculation that the Celts brought apple-growing with them when they first came to the British Isles.
Given that apples ripen in October, and that Samhain was held at the end of that month, it seems likely that apples would have been plentiful at Celtic Samhain feasts. Later Halloween celebrations weren’t content to use the apple only as a menu item, but also employed it in games, fortune-telling and decoration. In some areas of Ireland, 1 November was once called La Mas Ubhal – ‘the day of the apple’ – and in parts of the British Isles Halloween is still celebrated with a drink made of apples and ale called ‘lamb’s wool’, a corruption of the name. One particularly piquant description of producing lamb’s wool states that on Halloween, the apple was roasted on a string until it dropped off into a bowl of spiced ale set beneath it.
A journal article on Halloween written in 1844 notes that ‘The custom of bobbing for apples on All Hallow E’en, and on All Saints Day, which was formerly common over all England . . . is still practised in some parts of Ireland . . .’.25 This suggests that bobbing (or ducking) for apples had fallen out of favour in most areas of England by then. Robert Burns makes no mention of the custom in his classic work but a poem of 1792 by a contemporary, Janet Little, mentions snap-apple, a risky game in which an apple was placed on one end of a suspended stick and a lit candle at the other; the stick was then spun, and the object was to retrieve a mouthful of apple instead of hot wax. This game was so popular that Halloween became known as ‘Snap-apple Night’ in some areas (or, in Wales, ‘Snotching Night’, from the act of snatching the apple). Likewise, the name ‘Nutcrack Night’ – derived from burning nuts on the hearth to tell fortunes – was sometimes used in Northern England.
Bobbing for apples had been a popular pastime in Britain for at least 400 years, with the fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript The Luttrell Psalter showing a lord’s servants engaged in the game, but by the nineteenth century it may have been confined to Ireland and just a few areas of England. In his Observations on Popular Antiquities (1810), John Brand’s entry on Halloween begins with apples, although he suggests that bobbing is limited to only the north of England:
It is customary on this Night for young People in the North to dive for apples, catch at them when stuck on to one End of a Kind of hanging beam, at the other Extremity of which is fixed a lighted Candle, and that with their Mouths only, having their Hands tied behind their Backs; and many other Fooleries.26
In 1833, London painter Daniel Maclise created a small stir in the art world with his painting Snap-apple Night, which had been inspired by a trip to Ireland in 1832 and a visit to a Halloween party held by an esteemed local priest, Father Mathew Horgan. In the painting, party guests are shown both playing snap-apple and bobbing for apples.
Bobbing for apples might function as both a party game and a fortune-telling ritual. The game offered alternatives such as spearing an apple with a fork dropped from above, and retrieving an apple with a small extra prize, such as a coin, inserted into it. The element of augury, however, could be added simply by carving initials into the apples and seeing whose apple each player could successfully retrieve, or by placing a bit of a retrieved apple under the pillow that night to invite prophetic dreams.
Burns may not have rhymed about bobbing for apples, but he did mention the fortune-telling ritual of eating an apple before a mirror at midnight on Halloween, which went on to be one of the most oft-reported and popular of the Halloween fortune-telling stunts. There were dozens of variants on this ritual: in some the lass was required to brush her hair as she ate the apple, while in others it was necessary to slice the apple into nine sections, with the future intended appearing to receive the final slice.
Parts of apples were used in a number of fortune-telling customs. The skin of the apple might be pared, and then flung over the left shoulder as this rhyme (adapted from Gay’s The Shepherd’s Week) was recited:
I pare this pippin round and round again,
My sweetheart’s name to flourish on the plain;
I fling the unbroken paring o’er my head,
My sweetheart’s letter on the ground is read.27
The apple paring was then examined to find the shape of an initial which would indicate the name of one’s future spouse.
Apple seeds were also put to use. The apple was cut open, and the number of visible seeds indicated the future (two meant early marriage, three augured wealth, and so on). Seeds might be used on a hearth in place of nuts, or might be named and stuck to the skin of the face or hands. The first to fall might indicate the failed suitor, or the number of seeds remaining after a clap might indicate the number of years until marriage.
An article of 1822 recounting an Englishman’s visit to an Irish Halloween party notes that two young women entertained themselves by naming a pair of apples after a local lord and lady, then roasting them on the fire to laugh at the way they furiously sputtered and foamed.
Nuts were also revered by the Celts, and have been another staple of late harvest Halloween celebrations ever since. The custom of burning nuts on Halloween night to find the identity of one’s future spouse or the temperament of the relationship was practised equally in Ireland, Scotland, the northern parts of England and America, at least until ovens replaced open hearths. Chestnuts, walnuts and hazelnuts were those most often used, and one custom involved combining a walnut, a hazelnut and a nutmeg with some butter and sugar into small pills, which were taken just before bedtime on Halloween night to bring prophetic dreams. Walnut shells were used in a number of fortune-telling rituals: small objects might be placed inside shells that were then tied together, and the couple that could match two objects were destined for marriage; or small boats might be created from shells that were then filled with lighted candles and placed into a tub, their subsequent movements to and away from other ‘boats’ indicating future relationships.
Nuts also provided Halloween games: they could be hidden around a room to create a treasure hunt. Small prizes were also sometimes hidden in sealed walnut shells.
Cabbage and/or kale (or, in Wales especially, leeks) was another popular Halloween food, used in fortune-telling, pranking and a number of Halloween-specific dishes. The most common fortune-telling custom was that described by Burns, in which young people pulled cabbages on Halloween, then examined and tasted the stalk to glean insight into future mates.
Mischievous boys found an almost endless number of uses for cabbage in Halloween pranking. Cabbages made convenient missiles, and might be pulled and thrown at the doors of a prankster’s enemy. In one Scottish practice called ‘Burning the Reekie Mehr’, the stalk of the cabbage was hollowed out and filled instead with tow, which produced long flames when lit and blown (preferably through key holes). There were even stories of pranksters tying strings to cabbages in a field to give passers-by the illusion that the cabbages were moving.
Cabbage is one of the three main ingredients in colcannon, a food so popular at Halloween that 31 October was known as ‘Colcannon Night’ in some areas of Ireland and Scotland. Colcannon consists of cabbage, potatoes and onions mashed together, and is sometimes served with a ring or other tokens of prediction hidden inside.
Grains were also harvested around Halloween, and Burns noted the popularity of oats and barley in Halloween fortune-telling customs. The grain harvest was often celebrated by using parts of the corn to create a small doll-like figure called the corn dolly, or cailleach. This figure was hung in the kitchen and left there until Christmas, and was sometimes named differently (as a young maid or an old woman) depending on whether it was cut before or after Halloween.
Halloween had a variety of special cakes and baked goods, most of which also served in fortune-telling customs. The ‘fortune cake’ could be any cake with small tokens that represented future endeavours baked inside. Receiving a slice of cake with a coin in it, for example, foretold wealth, while a ring represented marriage and a thimble, spinsterhood. The ‘dumb cake’ was made from a simple dough that a group of girls prepared together in silence; at the end of baking, the girls’ future husbands would supposedly appear to take a piece. In Ireland, a special bread known as ‘barm brack’ remains a Halloween tradition; made from strong black tea and various dried fruits, barm brack is usually baked with fortune-telling pieces inside.
In Ireland, boxty has long been a familiar Halloween food item. A pancake made from potatoes and flour, boxty (from the Irish bachstai, meaning ‘poor house bread’), was popular on both Halloween and Boxing Day menus. Another popular Irish Halloween food based on potatoes was champ, in which potatoes were mashed with milk, butter and spring onions, with fortune-telling tokens usually hidden inside. Stampy was a sweet potato cake served on Halloween, made with potatoes, sugar, cream and caraway seeds.
But perhaps no food item was as important as the soul-cake. ‘Souling’ or ‘soul-caking’ once took place throughout the British Isles, and (since it was reported in the 1511 edition of Festyvall) is one of the earliest reported Halloween activities. Distribution of soul-cakes was reported as late as the beginning of the twentieth century in some areas (especially Derbyshire, Lancashire, Shropshire and Cheshire), and typically took place late on 1 November (All Souls’ Eve). Souling mostly involved children, although sometimes adults took part as well. One description from 1880 includes a version of a traditional souling rhyme:
The children go round to the houses early and late on All Saints’ day, not on All Souls’ day, and sing monotonously a doggerel; the lines vary a little with the groups of children, three to six in a group. The most complete version I can give you is as follows:
Soul! soul! a soul-cake;
Good mistress, gi’ us a soul-cake,
One for Peter, one for Paul
And one for them as made us all.
An apple or a cherry
Or anything else to make us merry.
Oh! good mistress, to the cellar
And fetch us a pail of water.
It is a good fame
To get a good name.28
In some areas, children engaged in souling in the morning, while servants or farm workers went from house to house in the evening, begging food and beer. The adults sometimes accompanied themselves with small musical instruments (such as a concertina), and in both cases the groups may have blackened their faces and/or carried with them a ‘hobby horse’. The hobby horse – sometimes referred to as ‘dobby horse’ or ‘Old Hob’ – was frequently a macabre creation, consisting of a real horse’s skull mounted atop a staff and carried by a man draped in a sheet or skin. Hobby horses were usually part of Christmas mumming plays, in which a troupe of adult actors went from house to house on Christmas Eve or Day and presented a variant of the old play St George and the Turk, but they also made an appearance at Halloween.
The ritual of souling included, of course, both those who were begging and the homeowners who handed out food, drink and coins; however, the most important item was the ‘soul cake’ (known in some areas as ‘saumas cakes’ or ‘saumas loaves’). These were small round seedcakes made with spices and with currants on top, and were themselves considered good luck. They were often kept instead of eaten. Certain homeowners had soul cakes that they had kept for years; one woman in Whitby was said in 1817 to have a soul cake that was a century old.
The Isle of Man had its own particular and peculiar customs. The Manx name for Halloween was ‘Hollantide’ or ‘hop-tu-naa’ (pronounced ‘hop-chew-nay’), which may have been derived from the Scottish name for New Year’s, Hogmanay. On 31 October, Manx youngsters have traditionally carried carved and lit turnips, known as ‘moots’, and gone from house to house reciting or (since the nineteenth century) singing some variant of this this odd poem:
Hop-tu-naa, This is old Hollantide night,
Trollalaa, The moon shines fair and bright.
Hop-tu-naa, I went to the well,
Trollalaa, And drank my fill;
Hop-tu-naa, On the way coming back,
Trollalaa, I met a pole-cat;
Hop-tu-naa, The cat began to grin,
Trollalaa, And I began to run;
Hop-tu-naa, Where did you run to?
Trollalaa, I ran to Scotland;
Hop-tu-naa, What were they doing there?
Trollalaa, Baking bannocks and roasting collops.
Hop-tu-naa, If you are going to give us anything,
give us it soon,
Or we’ll be away by the light of the moon – Hop-tu-naa!29
Money was exchanged for the performance, and the money was used to buy fireworks for Guy Fawkes Eve. Hop-tu-naa is still popular on the Isle of Man, although pumpkins are now as common as turnips, and Halloween material has been sold in shops for about the last decade. In one recent survey, 57 per cent of Manx residents reported that hop-tu-naa was ‘still fairly active in several areas’, although teenage respondents were more likely to use the name ‘Halloween’.30
There were a few slightly more practical uses for Halloween as well. Folklore included many mentions of weather in reference to All Saints’ Day because of its importance as a harvest festival and its place in the calendar as the transition from autumn to winter. One belief was that the wind’s direction on Halloween would hold throughout winter. A more whimsical rhyme ran:
If ducks do slide at Hollandtide, at Christmas they will swim;
If ducks do swim at Hollandtide, at Christmas they will slide.31
The period between Halloween and Martinmas was often a short spell of warmer weather and was referred to by Shakespeare (in Henry IV Part 1) as ‘All-Hallown Summer’. Farmers were commanded to sow wheat ‘from Michaelmas to Hollandtide’, and one recorded saying ran, ‘Set trees at Allhallontide and command them to prosper; set them after Candlemas and entreat them to grow.’32
Just as the Celts had repaid debts on Samhain, so Halloween also had an economic side. It was a popular time for hiring fairs, when servants who had just finished another year’s harvest with a lord would assemble to find next season’s work. If these fairs were held on 2 November (All Souls’ Day), they were sometimes referred to as ‘soul-mass hirings’. Hiring fairs often included celebrations as well, since those hired were usually given a small advance payment. Hiring fairs also occurred on Guy Fawkes Day and Martinmas.
Edinburgh was famed for its annual Hallow-fair, which lasted for more than a week and is recorded in the Edinburgh Charter of 1507. Hallow-fair – which was still being held into the twenty-first century – was less about business (although much was conducted there) than it was about providing a final opportunity for fun before the onset of the cruel Scottish winter. The poet Robert Fergusson, sometimes thought of as the poet who paved the way for Burns, captured the atmosphere in his ‘Hallow-fair’ of 1772:
At Hallowmas, whan nights grow lang,
And starnies shine fu’ clear,
Whan fock, the nippin cald to bang,
Their winter hap-warms wear,
Near Edinbrough a fair there hads,
I wat there’s nane whase name is,
For strappin dames and sturdy lads,
And cap and stoup, mair famous
Than it that day.33
At Fergusson’s Hallow-fair, young people drink and flirt, defy authority and buy goods from hawkers who have travelled long distances.
Hollantide fairs were also held in Wales, and were boisterous affairs with booths, crowded streets and pickpockets on the prowl. They involved both shopping – here, as in Scotland, gingerbread was a popular item – and hiring for the following year.
Charity was also a common fixture of the Halloween season. In Shropshire, for instance, All Saints’ Day was celebrated with a tradition called either ‘Pierce’s Charity’ or ‘the parting of the white bread’. A gentleman named Pierce had specified in his will that a small amount should be set aside each year to prepare bread for local widows and widowers, and this custom continued until nearly the end of the nineteenth century.
One of the most curious Halloween business rituals was the Horseshoe and Hobnail Service, which took place in the law courts in London each 31 October until the turn of the twentieth century. Dating back roughly 700 years, this ritual involved payment of rent by the King’s Remembrancer, acting on behalf of the tenants of two parcels of land held in Shropshire, to the Corporation of London, and consisted of two parts: first, the City Solicitor, acting on behalf of the Corporation, cut through two bundles of wood, using a hatchet on one and a bill-hook on the other; second, he counted out six horseshoes and 61 hobnails (the original rent due on the lands). This odd practice probably dated back to the use of the rented lands by the Knights Templar.
It was also around the end of the nineteenth century that the Catholic Church stopped naming churches ‘Allhallows’ out of deference to the growing popularity of Halloween. An account written in 1894 of a London parish named Allhallows Staining explains:
The dedication, Allhallows, was in Pre-Reformation times a favourite one for churches. In later years a dedication of similar meaning, i.e., All Saints, has been preferred, and the term Allhallows is now usually restricted to All Hallows’ Eve, 31st October.34
By the late nineteenth century, the celebration of Halloween in Great Britain seems to have been confined almost solely to children or poorer adults; virtually all of the descriptions of adult celebrations from this time describe the participants as ‘servants’, ‘peasants’ or ‘beggars’.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, Halloween was little more than a curiosity in most of Britain, but over the last two decades, American-style Halloween has exploded in popularity throughout the UK. British retailers reported that UK Halloween spending went from £12 million in 2001 to £280 million in 2010,35 with consumers purchasing pumpkins, decorations and costumes. Among the reasons given for the skyrocketing sales figures are the popularity of such U.S. films and series as True Blood and Twilight, and a desire to escape from a dismal economy into the realm of the fantastic.36 While many modern Britons still celebrate Halloween with simple fireworks and parties, costumes are becoming more popular. The supermarket chain Tesco didn’t even stock adult Halloween costumes until 2009, when the day fell on a Saturday, tipping off retailers to expect more sales. However, the bakery chain Greggs doubled sales of items such as bat biscuits and creepy cupcakes from 2008 to 2009. Another supermarket chain, Waitrose, reported a 676 per cent increase in sales of large pumpkins from 2009 to 2010. In 2009, retail sales for Halloween finally overtook those for Valentine’s Day in the UK, and now lag behind only Easter and Christmas.37
How did a festival that was essentially born in the British Isles find new life there after more than a century of languishing as little more than a quaint memory? To answer that, it’s necessary to leap across the Atlantic and examine how Halloween first took root in America during the nineteenth century, and why it came to flourish there.