According to the ancient Celtic calendar, festivals were celebrated in the `eve`, rather on the day. So what we now call `Halloween` is actually a continuation of this ancient Celtic festival-- the earlier pagan `All Hallow`s Eve` was the origional festival, later displaced to the following day by the church-- on 1 November, called `All Souls Day`. The Irish used to call samhain a holy night, the Vigil of Samhain. Churchmen described it as a night of charms, divinations, of reading the future with witches` mirrors and nutshell ashes, dunking for apples in tubs of water (representing the Cauldron of rebirth), and other so-called `objectionable` rites. Other Christian authorities wrote of Halloween customs: `many other superstitious cremonies, the remains of Druidism, are observed of this holiday, which will never be eradicated...(huh!)The name samhain remained, however, and down to the present day many churches still celebrate the Harvest service, with parishioners bringing fruits and berries to the alter.
One example from Scottish history earlier this century, is the following account of a local man who told of how samhuinn was celebrated in Fortingall (Perthshire, England) when he was a young boy. (The Fortingall area is famous for having the oldest yew tree in Europe, its standing stones, its connections to the story of Jesus and Joseph of Amrimathea, and for its connections with the early Druids and Celtic priesthood(s).)
This account tells of what it was like early this century to go to a samhuinn celebration, which featured a huge bonfire on the top of a hill, called the Mound if the Dead:
...Everybody shared in the preperations which began months before the event. The young people used to go up onto the hill to collect and store great quan-tities of whin, (gorse) which was once very plentiful there. This went on night after night. It was finally made into a huge pile with wood shavings and tar barrels added to increase it... it was the duty of the older men to build the bonfire on the top of the Mound of the Dead. Finally, it was lit, and the whole community took hands when it was blazing and danced round the mound both sunwise and anti-sunwise. As the fire began to wane, some of the younger boys took burning (cigarettes) from the flames and ran through the field with them, finally throwing them into the air and dancing over them as they lay glowing on the ground. When the last embers were showing, the boys would have a leaping competition across the ramians of the fire. When it was finished, the young people went home and dunked for apples and practised divination. The older people went to the Fortingall Hotel, an old coaching house, and held a dance there, with much merry making. The bonfire being the absolute centre of attention until it was consumed. The last bonfire, made by the community, was lit on the mound in 1924.
The Fortingall `Carn nam Marbh`, or Mound of the Dead, was the focus of the whole samhain season there. This mound is a Bronze Age tumulus; a stone called the `Clach a`Phlaigh`(Stone of the Plague) tops the mound. Local tradition says the mound contains the bodies of those victims of a horrible plague in early times.
Also sacred to ancient Celtic samhain time was the hazel nut, believed to have divining powers and sacred to poets. The magic of this nut was considered to be especially powerful on samhain eve-- and was often used in marriage dininations.
Robert Burns wrote about this Halloween custom in Scotland:
...Some mery, friendly, countra folks Together did convene, To burn their nuts, an`pu their stocks, An`haud their Halloween Fu`blithe that night.
Hazel nuts were sometimes named after an individual, and then thrown into the bonfire on samhaon eve. The manner in which it burned would determine the `fate` for that person for the next year.
To honour the dead, and devine the future were seen as important spiritual activities, as well as good community fun!
Later,
Kenaz
