Grist to the Mill

02 November, 2004

HALLOWEEN

Election day in the US today, but, to be truthful, I'm far more interested in the following:

For the heathen forefathers of Europe, the most popular fire-festival of the year was Midsummer Eve. This festival coincided with the summer solstice, so we can suppose that our pagan ancestors timed the Midsummer ceremony with the arrival of the sun at the highest point of its course in the sky. Thus, the founders of the midsummer rites must have observed the solstices - or turning-points of the sun’s apparent path in the sky - and regulated their festive calendar by astronomical considerations.

While this is fairly certain, it appears not to have been true of the Celtic peoples (who inhabited Europe and its islands and promontories stretching out into the Atlantic Ocean on the North-West). The principal fire-festivals of the Celts which survived to modern times were seemingly timed without reference to the position of the sun. These were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow Even or Hallowe’en – that is, the 31st October, the day before All Saints’ or Allhallows’ Day. These dates coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar year revolves (that is, solstices and equinoxes). Nor do they agree with the principal seasons of the agricultural year, the sowing in spring and the reaping in autumn. When May Day comes, the seed has long been committed to the earth, and when November opens, the harvest has long been reaped and garnered, the fields lie bare, the fruit-trees are stripped, and even the yellow leaves are fast fluttering to the ground. Yet the first of May and the first of November mark turning-points of the year in Europe; the former ushers in the genial heat and the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds the cold and barrenness of winter.

These particular points of the year are of particular concern to European herdsman; it is on the approach of summer that he drives his cattle out into the open to crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of winter that he leads them back to the safety and shelter of the stall. Accordingly, it seems not improbable that the Celtic division of the year into two halves at the beginning of May and the beginning of November dates from a time when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent for their subsistence on their herds. Great epochs of the year for them were the days on which the cattle went forth from the homestead in early summer and returned to it again in early winter. Even in Central Europe, a similar division of the year may be clearly traced: on one hand, May Day and its Eve, and on the other, the Feast of All Souls at the beginning of November, which, under a thin Christian cloak, conceals an ancient pagan festival of the dead. Hence we may suppose that everywhere throughout Europe, the celestial division of the year according to the solstices was preceded by what we may think of as a terrestrial division of the year according to the seasons.

Be that as it may, the two great Celtic festivals of May Day and the first of November closely resemble each other in the manner of their celebration and in the superstitions associated with them. The antique character impressed upon both, betrays a remote and purely pagan origin. The festival of May Day or Beltane, as the Celts called it, which ushered in summer, has already been described; it remains to give some account of the corresponding festival of Hallowe’en, which announced the arrival of winter.

Of the two feasts, Hallowe’en was perhaps of old the more important, since the Celts would have dated the beginning of the year from it rather than from Beltane. In the Isle of Man – one of the fortresses in which the Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege of the Saxon invaders – the first of November has been regarded as New Year’s day down to recent times. Another confirmation of the view that the Celts dated their year from the first of November is furnished by the various modes of divination which were commonly resorted to by the Celts, for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny, especially their fortune in the coming year. When could these devices for prying into the future be more reasonably put in practice than at the beginning of the year?

As a season of omens and auguries, Hallowe’en seems to have far surpassed Beltane in the imagination of the Celts. Another circumstance of great moment which points to the same conclusion is the association of the dead with Hallowe’en. Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe’en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside. Did not the lowing cattle then troop back from the summer pastures in the forests and on the hills to be fed and cared for in the stalls, while the bleak winds whistled among the swaying boughs and the snow-drifts deepened in the hollows? Could the good-man and the good-wife deny to the spirits of their dead the welcome which they gave to the herds?

It is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be hovering unseen on the day “when autumn to winter resigns the pale year.” Witches then speed on their errands of mischief, some sweeping through the air on besoms, others galloping along the roads on tabby-cats, which for that evening are turned into coal-black steeds. The fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about.

While a glamour of mystery and awe has always clung to Hallowe’en in the minds of the Celtic peasantry, the popular celebration of the festival has been, at least in modern times, by no means of a prevailing gloomy cast. On the contrary, it has been attended by picturesque features and merry pastimes, which rendered it the gayest night of the year. Amongst the things which in the Highlands of Scotland gave the festival a romantic beauty were the bonfires which blazed at frequent intervals on the heights. “On the last day of autumn, children gathered ferns, tar-barrels, the long thin stalks called gàinisg, and everything suitable for a bonfire. These were placed in a heap on an eminence near the house, and in the evening set fire to. There was one for each house, and it was an object of ambition who should have the biggest. Whole districts were brilliant with bonfires, and their glare across a Highland loch, and from many eminences, formed an exceedingly picturesque scene.”

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