SAMHAIN
On November first was Samhain ("summer's end").
"Take my tidings:
Stags contend;
Snows descend--
Summer's end!
"A chill wind raging,
The sun low keeping,
Swift to set
O'er seas high sweeping.
"Dull red the fern;
Shapes are shadows;
Wild geese mourn
O'er misty meadows.
"Keen cold limes each weaker wing,
Icy times--
Such I sing!
Take my tidings."
GRAVES: _First Winter Song._
Then the flocks were driven in, and men first had leisure after
harvest toil. Fires were built as a thanksgiving to Baal for
harvest. The old fire on the altar was quenched before the night of
October 31st, and the new one made, as were all sacred fires, by
friction. It was called "forced-fire." A wheel and a spindle were
used: the wheel, the sun symbol, was turned from east to west,
sunwise. The sparks were caught in tow, blazed upon the altar, and
were passed on to light the hilltop fires. The new fire was given
next morning, New Year's Day, by the priests to the people to light
their hearths, where all fires had been extinguished. The blessed
fire was thought to protect the year through the home it warmed. In
Ireland the altar was Tlactga, on the hill of Ward in Meath, where
sacrifices, especially black sheep, were burnt in the new fire.
From the death struggles and look of the creatures omens for the
future year were taken.
The year was over, and the sun's life of a year was done. The
Celts thought that at this time the sun fell a victim for six
months to the powers of winter darkness. In Egyptian mythology one
of the sun-gods, Osiris, was slain at a banquet by his brother
Sîtou, the god of darkness. On the anniversary of the murder, the
first day of winter, no Egyptian would begin any new business for
fear of bad luck, since the spirit of evil was then in power.
From the idea that the sun suffered from his enemies on this day
grew the association of Samhain with death.
"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the wither'd leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay
And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.
"The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the wild rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow:
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the cold clear heaven, as falls the
plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade,
and glen."
BRYANT: _Death of the Flowers._
In the same state as those who are dead, are those who have never
lived, dwelling right in the world, but invisible to most mortals
at most times. Seers could see them at any time, and if very many
were abroad at once others might get a chance to watch them too.
"There is a world in which we dwell,
And yet a world invisible.
And do not think that naught can be
Save only what with eyes ye see:
I tell ye that, this very hour,
Had but your sight a spirit's power,
Ye would be looking, eye to eye,
At a terrific company."
COXE: _Hallowe'en._
These supernatural spirits ruled the dead. There were two classes:
the Tuatha De Danann, "the people of the goddess Danu," gods of
light and life; and spirits of darkness and evil. The Tuatha had
their chief seat on the Isle of Man, in the middle of the Irish
Sea, and brought under their power the islands about them. On a
Midsummer Day they vanquished the Fir Bolgs and gained most of
Ireland, by the battle of Moytura.
A long time afterwards--perhaps 1000 B. C.--the Fomor, sea-demons,
after destroying nearly all their enemies by plagues, exacted from
those remaining, as tribute, "a third part of their corn, a third
part of their milk, and a third part of their children." This tax
was paid on Samhain. It was on the week before Samhain that the
Fomor landed upon Ireland. On the eve of Samhain the gods met them
in the second battle of Moytura, and they were driven back into the
ocean.
As Tigernmas, a mythical king of Ireland, was sacrificing "the
firstlings of every issue, and the scions of every clan" to Crom
Croich, the king idol, and lay prostrate before the image, he and
three-fourths of his men mysteriously disappeared.
"Then came
Tigernmas, the prince of Tara yonder
On Hallowe'en with many hosts.
A cause of grief to them was the deed.
Dead were the men
Of Bamba's host, without happy strength
Around Tigernmas, the destructive man of the north,
From the worship of Crom Cruaich. 'T was no luck for them.
For I have learnt,
Except one-fourth of the keen Gaels,
Not a man alive--lasting the snare!
Escaped without death in his mouth."
_Dinnsenchus of Mag Slecht_ (Meyer _trans._).
This was direct invocation, but the fire rites which were continued
so long afterwards were really only worshipping the sun by proxy,
in his nearest likeness, fire.
Samhain was then a day sacred to the death of the sun, on which had
been paid a sacrifice of death to evil powers. Though overcome at
Moytura evil was ascendant at Samhain. Methods of finding out the
will of spirits and the future naturally worked better then, charms
and invocations had more power, for the spirits were near to help,
if care was taken not to anger them, and due honors paid.