IRISH HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS

IRISH HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS

Traditionally you don’t wonder abroad on Halloween night, this is the night when the link between the  human and spirit worlds is most open. You never know who you will meet, a long dead relative back to warn you of an impending disaster (that ghost would technically be a friendly visit as the warning gives you time to prevent or allow for the events to come). There are also ghosts, faeries and such like who can be malicious or just old fashioned nasty, either to the world in general or maybe just you.

Light now officially gives way to Dark. In the Celtic calendar this was new-year’s, as the sun will be born from the darkness as the winter gives way to spring and summer. So apart from the celebrations of the feast, there was also the sensible precaution of staying in; remember most of the faeries and others who would visit would need to be invited in to do any mischief. So what do you do on a dark night when you have to have the kids and the in-laws all at home, yu play a game and if it works you do the same. It also helps if the food is entertaining. As with any regular event, we repeat ourselves and traditions start, here are a few associated with Halloween:

Colcannon

Ah yes, boiled mashed potatoes mixed in with a mixture of Kale or  Curly Kale (cabbage) and onions. The onions should be finely chopped and raw. The Kales should be soaked in boiling water or steamed for about a minute to soften it. I personally pull it from the steps to make it less chewy with the spuds. Some traditions put a coin in the mix for a lucky person to find, indicating good fortune for the year ahead.

Speaking of coins
Barn Brack (Bairin Breac)
This is a fruit filled sweet-bread, at first glance it resembles an Italian Panitoné but is usually heavier and served as a bread pan or round, it is essentially a fruit cake. However, like the colcannon, there is an element of looking to the future. Traditionally when it is being cooked , a number of items are added, a rag, a coin and a ring. The rag suggested poverty, the coin wealth and the ring, well you guessed it. Each person is given a slice of the breac to see what fortune awaits. Thankfully the tradition of the bairin Breac is alive and well. Other items placed in the breac, include some wood as a walking stick , suggesting the finder will have travels in the year ahead, a thimble or a button would divine that the finder would be a spinster or bachelor for ever. 

Halloween Costumes

One of the most visible and enjoyable aspects of the Halloween is ofcourse the costumes. They are essentially camouflage, after all when you have to be about on a night full of ghosts faeries and daemons you are going to want a way to avoid them. These “craturs” are using the night to wonder the Earth and ocaissionally  pass a message to particular humans (good or bad), given that you don’t know who these faeries are or what kind of beast they are, so the best thing to do is avoid them, and the best way to avoid them is to not look human, to look like one of them.

Trick or treat

One of the reasons you might want to be out on Halloween  night  is to” trick-or-treat”. It should be noted that this is regard as an Americanism, with the traditional Irish call of “anything for Halloween” now being replaced. It is thought that this tradition arose from the Druidic practice of collecting food stuffs from peoples in the community. This food is to appease the gods and ghosts who would visit, what was not used was given to the local poor. The giving of this food would bring good –fortune to a person’s land and livestock for the year ahead. Those who did were not as generous in their offerings as they should be usually had a trick or prank played on them, nothing too serious but enough that their lack of generosity was noted and served as an reminder not to do so again next year.

The Halloween Lantern

It was traditional to carve a suitably nasty and scary  face out of foodstuffs such as turnips and hang them on gate posts, doors or other places of entry or water crossings such as bridges to scare actual faeries and ghosts and prevent them from entering your lands and causing issues. If you hollowed out the turnip and placed a candle in  it, the strength of the talisman was increased. The jack O’Lantern tradition also has an Irish origin (or so we claim!).  According to tradition (again), our friend Jack was a hard drinking, foul-mouthed gambling blacksmith. It was during a card game that Jack ran in to some trouble at a poker game and ended up having to make a deal with the Devil for his soul, Jack got the better of the Devil (or so it seemed) and the Devil gave Jack what he needed, but also the guarantee that the Devil would never take his soul. Happy days! Or were they?  Well happy enough until Jack died and his sould made its way to Heaven, only to be refused entry because of his life-style when alive. No being able to enter Heaven he was sent back down to earth on the way to Hell. The Devil stopped him there and “honoured” his agreement with him and not take Jack’s soul, so out of Heaven and Hell, Jack had no choice but to wonder the high-ways and bi-ways of Ireland for all eternity. He was given a turnip lantern with nothing more than a glowing ember in it to light his way on his eternal journey along the laneways of Ireland.

As we have seen, it is not to advisable to walkabout on Halloween night, so staying in needed to be entertaining. In the early years cable TV or any TV for that matter was not really an option, so entertainment had to be provided by the people themselves, some of the games still in practice include:

Bobbing Apples and Snap Apple

Here a selection of apples are placed in a basin or bowl of water and each person has to lift one out with their mouth without  using their hands (which should be behind their backs). Should you try this at home, be prepared to get wet. Now, if you don’t want to get wet there is another version where an apple is tied to a piece of string and suspended from the ceiling to about the height of a person’s mouth.  The players are then blind-folded and brought to the hanging apple. Again the intention is to bite in to the apple and take it. Why Apples? Well, they were and still were indigenous and plentiful, also another legend associated with Samhain, was that of the Pucha (puca) an evil faery. Traditionally all crops must have been harvested by Samhain, this included the apples, if they were no, the Pucha would spit  (or urinate, depending on the version) on any unharvested  apples making them inedible, as consequence families usually had an abundance of apples about.

Bonfire

The tradition of the bonfire is perhaps one of the oldest and most significant. Each year the flames and fires of the old year were extinguished. At Samhain, under the guidance of the Druids a new flame was lit and from that all fire would be symbolically lit for the year ahead.  The fire represented the new light of the sun which would renew in the spring, this was new light, new life, the new year. It was also seen as a safe way way to scare off the faeries who might appear from the underworld on this night. Large amounts of noise and commotion also helped…

Halloween and Samhain, a History

Halloween, that night when the ghouls, ghosts and daemons which comes to us every autumn/fall; but what do we actually know about it. Is how we remember Halloween shaped by Hollywood and modern fashions or our  traditions carried through the centuries. 

Halloween as we know it can be traced back to the pre-Christian Druidic festival of Samhain. With the name of Halloween coming only since about the 7^th century with the Feast of All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day, On 1 November each year the night before becoming All Hallow’s eve or ‘een, eventually. All soul’s day is celebrated on November 2 each year and was first celebrated about 100 years after All Saints’ Day.  The initiation of this feast-day was as attempt to further bury pagan customs and replace them with Christian celebrations. With this holiday the festival of Samhain and the old Roman festival of Pomona (Roman harvest festival with non of the darker sides of Samhain) were mingled into the sands of history.

The festival of  Samhain, was one of the pre-eminent religious festival of the old Celtic calendar. The word “Samhain” itself means “summer’s end”. It was a harvest festival which marked the end of summer and the start of the winter season, the dark time. It was celebrated from  the sunset on the October 31 through the following day, November 1.

Samhain was one of the four special festivals spread  through-out the Celtic year to make the passage of the seasons and time. It also celebrated certain social practices necessary for  Celtic society.The four festivals were ; Imbolc on the 1^st February. This festival has now largely been assigned to the footnotes of history, with Lá Fhéile Bríde, Saint Bridget’s day now celebrated at this time. The Spring festival of Beltaine, on the 1^st May is still remembered and is today used as a celebration of “Creativity as we age”, a week or so of activities to celebrate the contribution made to the arts and society by older members of the community. The Festival of Lúnasa which takes place on the first of August has also been revived and is essentially an arts festival which is Sligo based[1]

The original festival of Samhain was a lot more than the Halloween we see today, with a far more significant message.

 Samhain began with the Festival of Fire on the evening of 31 October, possibly in honour of the sun god Móg Ruith . At this time all fires in the country would be ceremoniously quenched only for a sacred fire to be lit on the Hill of Tlachtga by the High-King, the flame from this used to light torches which would bring the new year’s flame to the corners of the country. The food consumed during Samhain would be cooked on these new fires. This was essentially the New Year’s festivity, the old year was quenched out to allow the new to begin. The year’s crops having been  harvested and stored. The livestock was also brought in at this stage with any animals to be slaughtered for food in the winter ahead selected and readied for slaughter, when it would come. Fruits and other crops were also to be harvested by this date with the folklore being that any fruits or berries left on harvested by this day would be bewitched and inedible.

 The passage of the year from old to new  is perhaps the part of Samhain which we remember most. Whereas we see the day as starting with dawn, the Celts saw it as starting when dark and progressing to light. This concept they also took to their calendar. The dark nights of November would eventually give way to the bright days of  spring and summer.  There was also the spiritual side to the festival. This time of transition between years was also a time of transition between world, this one and the next. It was a time when spirits would return to visit family members and others with messages, some good, some bad.  At this time it was felt that those ghosts and spirits were on their journey  to the Otherworld, but had some last message or function to perform. In many cases these spirits were not seen as bad or malevolent. Dead ancestors who left this world for the other during the previous year were invited to homes and treated as guests of honour. Food was prepared for both the living and the dead, the food prepared symbolically for the ancestors was shared with the poorer members of society.

 Note: the legends which the author grew up with suggested that although the appearance of a ghost at this time may bring bad news with it, it was the news that was bad, not the ghost and indeed it was felt that the bringing of bad news by a ghost was not a harbinger of doom  but rather a warning, a chance to possible prevent foretold events from occurring.  Of course families being families and people being people meant that not all of these ghostly visits were welcome, indeed some were to settle old scores. To prevent this the living would often dress up in costumes and masks to prevent the dead from recognising those they come to communicate with.

 The importance of Samhain can be seen in the surviving burial mounds at Tlachtga ( the home of the fire festival on the eve of Samhain)  and Tara.   The famous Mound of the Hostages has its entrance passage aligned with the rising Samhain  The importance of this is the age of the Mound; being 4,500 to 5,000 years old, it predates Celts by about 2000 years. This shows us that the time associated with Samhain was noteworthy even to those people who populated Ireland even before the Celts who are understood to have arrived in Ireland around 2,500 years ago.

Faced with the decline of the sun as the months carried on the bonfire was seen as a way of assisting the sun at this time of the year when it was seen to be at it weakest and most vulnerable.  It was at this time that Donn, the Lord of the Underworld was sufficiently strong to walk freely upon the earth with his followers of ghosts, faeries and other creatures.  Donn is said to have been a Milisean ( a mythical race who invaded the island millennia ago), who was killed through the Druids tricking him to head in to a storm with his ship. Legend says he and a number of his followers are buried on Skellig Michel (a world heritage site because of the early Christian monastery on the island).

Given his rank  in life he became the Lord of Death in the after-life. It was said that the souls of the dead gathered at Skellig when travelling to and from the underworld. Legends tell of fishermen hearing strange boats in the night heading to and from the islands, the names of the dead being called out as they land on Skellig about to travel between worlds.

 Just as the Druids marked the passing of the light and the closeness between both worlds at this time it was only natural that this festival also marked the dead. The say Samhain is suspended in time given its links with the old and new year but also the link between both worlds. Whereas ghosts may have returned with messages there were still a lot of others in the underworld which might return purely for bedevilment; minor gods, faeries and others. You would want to hide yourself from these folks.

 It is possibly a sign of the confidence of the ancient Celts in their belief of  good over evil, of rebirth that at the very time when the linkages between this world and the underworld were at their strongest, all fires were quenched until re-lit, for this night there was very little to protect against those visitors from the underworld who might be up to mischief. The relighting of the fires symbolised the conquering of light over dark, life over death. With the fires re-lit, the spirits who would be welcomed to a home could come and go safely and with no risk to their human hosts. Just as we leave out food for Santa Claus, so did our ancestors for those who returned that night. The fires would warm the visiting ghosts, they would know hospitality and the human hosts would not have it said that they treated their ancestors with anything less than reverence.  The human  hosts just had to make sure that those visitor s from the underworld had no old scores to settle, if they did, Samhain was the night they got settled.

Some suggest that the “trick or treat” aspect of the modern Halloween reflects this with the visiting children dressed as the ghosts and fed by us with some of the offering we left out. This offering would also appease less friendly ghosts and spirits. Anger them by not offing food and the angered ghosts would ensure there was a year of bad-luck upon the household.

 The time of Samhain was a boundary time, between summer and autumn, between light and dark, this world and the next; and so it was only logical that this would spill into the human world. The boundaries between one person’s land and another’s were seen as favourite places for these ghostly visitors to assemble, likewise bridges and crossroads. Of course burial grounds were also places to be avoided this night more than ever.  The importance of  “managing” the dead can also be seen in the practice of burying dead Druids. If a Druid died during the year, he would only be partially buried, covered in stones to prevent animals taking the body away. On the night of Samhain the Druid’s corpse would be unburied and burned on the Samhain bonfire.

 Samhain also marked the end of the military year. The Fianna would “hang-up” their weapons for the winter, enemies vanquished and food hunted for the winter months. We can also see in the legends of Fionn Mac Cumhail, Cuchulainn and others that Samhain figures prominently in the legends, fixing times and places for the stories and contexts.

 Modern Halloween is a product of 19^th century emigration   from Ireland and England to places such as the US, where the old customs and traditions were often held on to with a sense of nostalgia and merged with a myriad other  cultures and traditions  to give us the pop-culture, family friendly festival we know today.

 The trick or treat visitations can be seen as the visits of the year’s deceased back to their families and our need to treat them with respect. The general approach of  fancy dress, may be seen as an attempt to avoid less than friendly ghosts and faeries.  Even the bonfires we light bring us back thousands of years to the celebration of light over darkness, new over old, good over evil.There  is much made of potential human sacrifices at this and other times of year, but the evidence would suggest that the sacrifices were usually symbolic with milk and corn or other foods being offered.

It was a time of  the puchí (ghosts),  the bean sidhe and faeiries.  This was the only night of the year a human can kill a bean sidhe (for what ever reason), but it was also the night when humans could see the great palaces of the faery aristocracy. But as with anything dealing with the faery folk there was a sting in the tale.  Visiting humans would be guests in the homes of these great faeries, eating and drinking what was on offer, the openness of the hospitality was even extended to the female companions of the faery Lords. This could be done on this night only, and only if all of the rules were obeyed, if not, they would be trapped there. Sounds like a risk people could take, except that the rules and regulations were such that the chances of messing up and suffering the wrath of the faery fold outweighed the chance of success.

Halloween traditions

Samhain was not just about the dead or the past year, but also about looking to the future, omens and signs had a particular strength and meaning on this night. An apple peel falling to the floor might make the first letter of a potential spouse coming in the year ahead.

Another aspect of Samhain or Halloween which developed is the playing of games. These may not all be linked to the ancient spirits. The ducking  for apples for example is seen these days as just a game, it may have been a convenient way of doing away with some excess stock at the end of harvest. 

 Looking to the future there was, is still,  the ritual of the ring hidden in a pan of brack – a fruit loaf baked for this time of year. Variations of this include rings being placed in foods such as colcannon. If you find the ring, you will be married within the year. A coin is also placed in the mixture, signifying wealth and riches in the year ahead.

 Although the pumpkin is not a typical Irish foodstuff , there still might be  a route to the pumpkin lanterns through Samhain.  It is said tha the ancients produced menacing faces out of turnips and hung them from gates posts and doorways to prevent unwanted visitors from the underworld. Adding a candle to this face added to its power and visibility.

 In modern times, pumpkins are used. They're considerably easier to carve, and a lot bigger, too, but they are not native to Ireland. 

Legend has it that the Halloween lantern that we know today, comes from a game of cards. Jack  O’Lantern made a deal with the devil and strangely enough managed to better him, he got the Devil to agree never to take his soul. That was all well and good until Jack died and his licentiousness, gambling and general poor living meant that he was turned away at the gates of Heaven. The Devil honoured his side of the deal and did not take Jack  in to Hell, the result was that he now wonders the lanes and by-ways of Ireland for all eternity with nothing but a turnip which with a hollowed centre holding a burning l ember from hell thrown to him by the Devil.

 The legends of Halloween will continue to grow for as long as we celebrate the holiday, but at the end of the day,  it is what it is, a tradition still alive today in its modern form which stretches back into the dark shadows of time, a time of light and dark this world and the next.

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[1] http://www.sligotoday.ie/details.php?id=26877

Gone Girl

This is a movie which initially left me thinking if this is a good or bad movie. It grew on me as it progressed and turned in to a thriller I was happy to watch. Not the best movie ever made but far from the worst. It reminded me of the old Noir thrillers such as Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) or Joan Crawford’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962).

Ben Affleck (Argo 2012) is the ordinary everyday guy who,  on the day he is celebrating his 5^th wedding anniversary,  comes home to scene of a struggle in his house and his wife missing. The events take place the town of North Carthage a sleepy backwater which is a mirror to the busy New York lives Affleck and his wife lived prior to coming to the town (for personal and economic  reasons).

Following the initial call from Affleck’s character, Nick Dunne, the police wonder if all is not quite what it seems. The missing wife Amy (Rosamund Pike, A Long Way Down, 2014) is actually the inspiration for a children’s book character by her parents. Upon hearing of her missing the Parents come to town and quickly set-up a volunteer network to find their daughter. Through a series of flash-backs we see how Nick and Amy met, and eventually ended up back in small town North Carthage. This also allows us to get to know the missing wife and  sets the scene for the action to unfold as the movie progresses. The tension between Nick and Amy’s parents is palatable if under played, very nicely done. As with any detective story we are immediately fed with a collection of possible suspects and a town who is growing increasingly hostile to Nick and his sister as they are suspected of Amy’s disappearance. The deliberate clues being left behind don’t help the situation either.

As is always the case we begin to get the self-opinionated locals with this own theories as to what happened. In the middle of all this is Detective Rhonda Boney ( Kim Dickens, Sons of Anarchy, 2013-14) who does not let the emotions of the small town crowds cloud her judgement. She is looking for a missing woman. Having been a suspect, events unfold and Nick is eventually released again, such is the objective nature of Detective Boney, that Nick at one stage turns to here and asks “so we are friends again?” Her response is a calm, yes, now that she is happy he is not guilty.

As the search progresses we start to see cracks appear in the perfect marriage between the Dunnes, we also learn of the history of people and their romantic pasts. Nick Dunne is originally from the town and spends a good deal of his time with his sister, who unwittingly becomes involved in the evolving situation. As the situation descends Nick is forced to hire an expensive New York lawyer, Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry, The Single Moms Club, 2014) to protect himself. The only other person Nick has on his side is his sister, Margo (Carrie Coon, Intelligence, TV, 2014) with whom he shares ownership of a bar, “The Bar” in town.

It also does not help Nick’s cause that his perfect marriage, has a kink in it, both husband and wife are feeling the tension in their marriage and we later learn Nick might have been doing something he should not have.

However things are not as they seem and as the movie progresses we see the true crime reveal itself through the deliberate clues placed previously by his wife, Amy. This movie may place the character of “Amy” as one of the better Noir characters full stop. The support cast with the likes of Neil Patrick Harris (The Muppets, 2011) is excellent, such is the picture painted of Harris's character even before we meet him that it (deliberately) shadows our opinion of him right to the end, as the movie unfolds his past is something that sits in the shadows waiting to come out.

I would love to tell you about the movie, but there are so many twists and turns that anything said will impact the story. With some movies twists are thrown in to try to keep the audience engaged and sometimes look purely as an attempt to keep the audience. Here the twists are an essential part of the plot without making it feel laboured or drawn-out.

I had certain concerns about this movie starting off, but they quickly disappeared. The movie is directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, 1991, The Social Network, 2010), his experience shows, we are brought along as the plot and characters develop. 

Rating a solid 7/10, not perfect, but not bad and it keeps us well entertained, drawing us in to the continuously unfolding story. Just as we get to one level or accept a twist, there is another one quickly following behind. The Screenplay is written by Gillian Flynn, who also wrote the novel as a result the team knew the movie they wanted to make and did so. 

Watch it and enjoy it.