HALLOWE'EN BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS IN IRELAND
Ireland has a literature of Hallowe'en, or "Samhain," as it used to
be called. Most of it was written between the seventh and the
twelfth centuries, but the events were thought to have happened
while paganism still ruled in Ireland.
The evil powers that came out at Samhain lived the rest of the time
in the cave of Cruachan in Connaught, the province which was given
to the wicked Fomor after the battle of Moytura. This cave was
called the "hell-gate of Ireland," and was unlocked on November Eve
to let out spirits and copper-colored birds which killed the farm
animals. They also stole babies, leaving in their place
changelings, goblins who were old in wickedness while still in the
cradle, possessing superhuman cunning and skill in music. One way
of getting rid of these demon children was to ill-treat them so
that their people would come for them, bringing the right ones
back; or one might boil egg-shells in the sight of the changeling,
who would declare his demon nature by saying that in his centuries
of life he had never seen such a thing before.
Brides too were stolen.
"You shall go with me, newly married bride,
And gaze upon a merrier multitude;
White-armed Nuala and Ængus of the birds,
And Feacra of the hurtling foam, and him
Who is the ruler of the western host,
Finvarra, and the Land of Heart's Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."
YEATS: _Land of Heart's Desire._
In the first century B. C. lived Ailill and his queen Medb. As they
were celebrating their Samhain feast in the palace,
"Three days before Samhain at all times,
And three days after, by ancient custom
Did the hosts of high aspiration
Continue to feast for the whole week."
O'CIARAIN: _Loch Garman._
they offered a reward to the man who should tie a bundle of twigs
about the feet of a criminal who had been hanged by the gate. It
was dangerous to go near dead bodies on November Eve, but a bold
young man named Nera dared it, and tied the twigs successfully. As
he turned to go he saw
"the whole of the palace as if on fire before him, and the heads
of the people of it lying on the ground, and then he thought he
saw an army going into the hill of Cruachan, and he followed
after the army."
GREGORY: _Cuchulain of Muirthemne._
The door was shut. Nera was married to a fairy woman, who betrayed
her kindred by sending Nera to warn King Ailill of the intended
attack upon his palace the next November Eve. Nera bore summer
fruits with him to prove that he had been in the fairy _sid_. The
next November Eve, when the doors were opened Ailill entered and
discovered the crown, emblem of power, took it away, and plundered
the treasury. Nera never returned again to the homes of men.
Another story of about the same time was that of Angus, the son of
a Tuatha god, to whom in a dream a beautiful maiden appeared. He
wasted away with love for her, and searched the country for a girl
who should look like her. At last he saw in a meadow among a
hundred and fifty maidens, each with a chain of silver about her
neck, one who was like the beauty of his dream. She wore a golden
chain about her throat, and was the daughter of King Ethal Anbual.
King Ethal's palace was stormed by Ailill, and he was forced to
give up his daughter. He gave as a reason for withholding his
consent so long, that on Samhain Princess Caer changed from a
maiden to a swan, and back again the next year.
"And when the time came Angus went to the loch, and he saw the
three times fifty white birds there with their silver chains
about their necks, and Angus stood in a man's shape at the edge
of the loch, and he called to the girl: 'Come and speak with me,
O Caer!'
"'Who is calling me?' said Caer.
"'Angus calls you,' he said, 'and if you do come, I swear by my
word I will not hinder you from going into the loch again.'"
GREGORY: _Cuchulain of Muirthemne._
She came, and he changed to a swan likewise, and they flew away to
King Dagda's palace, where every one who heard their sweet singing
was charmed into a sleep of three days and three nights.
Princess Etain, of the race of the Tuatha, and wife of Midir, was
born again as the daughter of Queen Medb, the wife of Ailill. She
remembers a little of the land from which she came, is never quite
happy,
"But sometimes--sometimes--tell me: have you heard,
By dusk or moonset have you never heard
Sweet voices, delicate music? Never seen
The passage of the lordly beautiful ones
Men call the Shee?"
SHARP: _Immortal Hour._
even when she wins the love of King Eochaidh. When they have been
married a year, there comes Midir from the Land of Youth. By
winning a game of chess from the King, he gets anything he may ask,
and prays to see the Queen. When he sees her he sings a song of
longing to her, and Eochaidh is troubled because it is Samhain, and
he knows the great power the hosts of the air "have then over those
who wish for happiness."
"Etain, speak!
What is the song the harper sings, what tongue
Is this he speaks? for in no Gaelic lands
Is speech like this upon the lips of men.
No word of all these honey-dripping words
Is known to me. Beware, beware the words
Brewed in the moonshine under ancient oaks
White with pale banners of the mistletoe
Twined round them in their slow and stately death.
It is the feast of Sáveen" (Samhain).
SHARP: _Immortal Hour._
In vain Eochaidh pleads with her to stay with him. She has already
forgotten all but Midir and the life so long ago in the Land of
Youth.
"In the Land of Youth
There are pleasant places;
Green meadows, woods,
Swift grey-blue waters.
"There is no age there,
Nor any sorrow.
As the stars in heaven
Are the cattle in the valleys.
"Great rivers wander
Through flowery plains.
Streams of milk, of mead,
Streams of strong ale.
"There is no hunger
And no thirst
In the Hollow Land,
In the Land of Youth."
SHARP: _Immortal Hour._
She and Midir fly away in the form of two swans, linked by a chain
of gold.
Cuchulain, hopelessly sick of a strange illness brought on by Fand
and Liban, fairy sisters, was visited the day before Samhain by a
messenger, who promised to cure him if he would go to the
Otherworld. Cuchulain could not make up his mind to go, but sent
Laeg, his charioteer. Such glorious reports did Laeg bring back
from the Otherworld,
"If all Erin were mine,
And the kingship of yellow Bregia,
I would give it, no trifling deed,
To dwell for aye in the place I reached."
_Cuchulain's Sick-bed._ (Meyer _trans._)
that Cuchulain went thither, and championed the people there
against their enemies. He stayed a month with the fairy Fand. Emer,
his wife at home, was beset with jealousy, and plotted against
Fand, who had followed her hero home. Fand in fear returned to her
deserted husband, Emer was given a Druidic drink to drown her
jealousy, and Cuchulain another to forget his infatuation, and they
lived happily afterward.
Even after Christianity was made the vital religion in Ireland, it
was believed that places not exorcised by prayers and by the sign
of the cross, were still haunted by Druids. As late as the fifth
century the Druids kept their skill in fortune-telling. King Dathi
got a Druid to foretell what would happen to him from one
Hallowe'en to the next, and the prophecy came true. Their religion
was now declared evil, and all evil or at any rate suspicious
beings were assigned to them or to the devil as followers.
"_Maire Bruin:_
Are not they, likewise, the children of God?
_Father Hart:_
Colleen, they are the children of the fiend,
And they have power until the end of Time,
When God shall fight with them a great pitched battle
And hack them into pieces."
YEATS: _Land of Heart's Desire._
The power of fairy music was so great that St. Patrick himself was
put to sleep by a minstrel who appeared to him on the day before
Samhain. The Tuatha De Danann, angered at the renegade people who
no longer did them honor, sent another minstrel, who after laying
the ancient religious seat Tara under a twenty-three years' charm,
burned up the city with his fiery breath.
These infamous spirits dwelt in grassy mounds, called "forts,"
which were the entrances to underground palaces full of treasure,
where was always music and dancing. These treasure-houses were open
only on November Eve
"For the fairy mounds of Erinn are always
opened about Hallowe'en."
_Expedition of Nera._ (Meyer _trans._)
when the throngs of spirits, fairies, and goblins trooped out for
revels about the country. The old Druid idea of obsession, the
besieging of a person by an evil spirit, was practised by them at
that time.
"This is the first day of the winter, and to-day the
Hosts of the Air are in their greatest power."
WARREN: _Twig of Thorn._
If the fairies wished to seize a mortal--which power they had as
the sun-god could take men to himself--they caused him to give
them certain tokens by which he delivered himself into their hands.
They might be milk and fire--
"_Maire Bruin:_
A little queer old woman cloaked in green,
Who came to beg a porringer of milk.
_Bridget Bruin:_
The good people go asking milk and fire
Upon May Eve--woe to the house that gives,
For they have power over it for a year."
YEATS: _Land of Heart's Desire._
or one might receive a fairy thorn such as Oonah brings home, which
shrivels up at the touch of St. Bridget's image;
"Oh, ever since I kept the twig of thorn and hid it, I have seen
strange things, and heard strange laughter and far voices
calling."
WARREN: _Twig of Thorn._
or one might be lured by music as he stopped near the fort to watch
the dancing, for the revels were held in secret, as those of the
Druids had been, and no one could look on them unaffected.
A story is told of Paddy More, a great stout uncivil churl, and
Paddy Beg, a cheerful little hunchback. The latter, seeing lights
and hearing music, paused by a mound, and was invited in. Urged to
tell stories, he complied; he danced as spryly as he could for his
deformity; he sang, and made himself so agreeable that the fairies
decided to take the hump off his back, and send him home a straight
manly fellow. The next Hallowe'en who should come by the same place
but Paddy More, and he stopped likewise to spy at the merrymaking.
He too was called in, but would not dance politely, added no
stories nor songs. The fairies clapped Paddy Beg's hump on his
back, and dismissed him under a double burden of discomfort.
A lad called Guleesh, listening outside a fort on Hallowe'en heard
the spirits speaking of the fatal illness of his betrothed, the
daughter of the King of France. They said that if Guleesh but knew
it, he might boil an herb that grew by his door and give it to the
princess and make her well. Joyfully Guleesh hastened home,
prepared the herb, and cured the royal girl.
Sometimes people did not have the luck to return, but were led away
to a realm of perpetual youth and music.
"_Father Hart._ What are you reading?
_Maire Bruin._ How a Princess Edane,
A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard
A voice singing on a May Eve like this,
And followed, half awake and half asleep,
Until she came into the land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue;
And she is still there, busied with a dance,
Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood,
Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top."
YEATS: _Land of Heart's Desire._
If one returned, he found that the space which seemed to him but
one night, had been many years, and with the touch of earthly sod
the age he had postponed suddenly weighed him down. Ossian,
released from fairyland after three hundred years dalliance there,
rode back to his own country on horseback. He saw men imprisoned
under a block of marble and others trying to lift the stone. As he
leaned over to aid them the girth broke. With the touch of earth
"straightway the white horse fled away on his way home, and Ossian
became aged, decrepit, and blind."
No place as much as Ireland has kept the belief in all sorts of
supernatural spirits abroad among its people. From the time when on
the hill of Ward, near Tara, in pre-Christian days, the sacrifices
were burned and the Tuatha were thought to appear on Samhain, to as
late as 1910, testimony to actual appearances of the "little
people" is to be found.
"'Among the usually invisible races which I have seen in Ireland,
I distinguish five classes. There are the Gnomes, who are
earth-spirits, and who seem to be a sorrowful race. I once saw
some of them distinctly on the side of Ben Bulbin. They had
rather round heads and dark thick-set bodies, and in stature were
about two and one-half feet. The Leprechauns are different, being
full of mischief, though they, too, are small. I followed a
Leprechaun from the town of Wicklow out to the Carraig Sidhe,
"Rock of the Fairies," a distance of half a mile or more, where
he disappeared. He had a very merry face, and beckoned to me with
his finger. A third class are the Little People, who, unlike the
Gnomes and Leprechauns, are quite good-looking; and they are very
small. The Good People are tall, beautiful beings, as tall as
ourselves.... They direct the magnetic currents of the earth. The
Gods are really the Tuatha De Danann, and they are much taller
than our race.'"
WENTZ: _Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries._
The sight of apparitions on Hallowe'en is believed to be fatal to
the beholder.
"One night my lady's soul walked along the wall like a cat. Long
Tom Bowman beheld her and that day week fell he into the well and
was drowned."
PYLE: _Priest and the Piper._
One version of the Jack-o'-lantern story comes from Ireland. A
stingy man named Jack was for his inhospitality barred from all
hope of heaven, and because of practical jokes on the Devil was
locked out of hell. Until the Judgment Day he is condemned to walk
the earth with a lantern to light his way.
The place of the old lord of the dead, the Tuatha god Saman, to
whom vigil was kept and prayers said on November Eve for the good
of departed souls, was taken in Christian times by St. Colomba or
Columb Kill, the founder of a monastery in Iona in the fifth
century. In the seventeenth century the Irish peasants went about
begging money and goodies for a feast, and demanding in the name of
Columb Kill that fatted calves and black sheep be prepared. In
place of the Druid fires, candles were collected and lighted on
Hallowe'en, and prayers for the souls of the givers said before
them. The name of Saman is kept in the title "Oidhche Shamhna,"
"vigil of Saman," by which the night of October 31st was until
recently called in Ireland.
There are no Hallowe'en bonfires in Ireland now, but charms and
tests are tried. Apples and nuts, the treasure of Pomona, figure
largely in these. They are representative winter fruits, the
commonest. They can be gathered late and kept all winter.
A popular drink at the Hallowe'en gathering in the eighteenth
century was milk in which crushed roasted apples had been mixed. It
was called lambs'-wool (perhaps from "La Mas Ubhal," "the day of
the apple fruit"). At the Hallowe'en supper "callcannon," mashed
potatoes, parsnips, and chopped onions, is indispensable. A ring is
buried in it, and the one who finds it in his portion will be
married in a year, or if he is already married, will be lucky.
"They had colcannon, and the funniest things were found in
it--tiny dolls, mice, a pig made of china, silver sixpences, a
thimble, a ring, and lots of other things. After supper was over
all went into the big play-room, and dived for apples in a tub of
water, fished for prizes in a basin of flour; then there were
games----"
TRANT: _Hallowe'en in Ireland._
A coin betokened to the finder wealth; the thimble, that he would
never marry.
A ring and a nut are baked in a cake. The ring of course means
early marriage, the nut signifies that its finder will marry a
widow or a widower. If the kernel is withered, no marriage at all
is prophesied. In Roscommon, in central Ireland, a coin, a sloe,
and a bit of wood were baked in a cake. The one getting the sloe
would live longest, the one getting the wood was destined to die
within the year.
A mould of flour turned out on the table held similar tokens. Each
person cut off a slice with a knife, and drew out his prize with
his teeth.
After supper the tests were tried. In the last century nut-shells
were burned. The best-known nut test is made as follows: three nuts
are named for a girl and two sweethearts. If one burns steadily
with the girl's nut, that lover is faithful to her, but if either
hers or one of the other nuts starts away, there will be no happy
friendship between them.
Apples are snapped from the end of a stick hung parallel to the
floor by a twisted cord which whirls the stick rapidly when it is
let go. Care has to be taken not to bite the candle burning on the
other end. Sometimes this test is made easier by dropping the
apples into a tub of water and diving for them, or piercing them
with a fork dropped straight down.
Green herbs called "livelong" were plucked by the children and hung
up on Midsummer Eve. If a plant was found to be still green on
Hallowe'en, the one who had hung it up would prosper for the year,
but if it had turned yellow or had died, the child would also die.
Hemp-seed is sown across three furrows, the sower repeating:
"Hemp-seed, I saw thee, hemp-seed, I saw thee; and her that is to
be my true love, come after me and draw thee." On looking back over
his shoulder he will see the apparition of his future wife in the
act of gathering hemp.
Seven cabbage stalks were named for any seven of the company, then
pulled up, and the guests asked to come out, and "see their
sowls."
"One, two, three, and up to seven;
If all are white, all go to heaven;
If one is black as Murtagh's evil,
He'll soon be screechin' wi' the devil."
Red Mike "was a queer one from his birth, an' no wonder, for he
first saw the light atween dusk an' dark o' a Hallowe'en Eve." When
the cabbage test was tried at a party where Mike was present, six
stalks were found to be white, but Mike's was "all black an' fowl
wi' worms an' slugs, an' wi' a real bad smell ahint it." Angered at
the ridicule he received, he cried: "I've the gift o' the night, I
have, an' on this day my curse can blast whatever I choose." At
that the priest showed Mike a crucifix, and he ran away howling,
and disappeared through a bog into the ground.
SHARP: _Threefold Chronicle._
Twelve of the party may learn their future, if one gets a clod of
earth from the churchyard sets up twelve candles in it, lights and
names them. The fortune of each will be like that of the
candle-light named for him,--steady, wavering, or soon in darkness.
A ball of blue yarn was thrown out of the window by a girl who held
fast to the end. She wound it over on her hand from left to right,
saying the Creed backwards. When she had nearly finished, she
expected the yarn would be held. She must ask "Who holds?" and the
wind would sigh her sweetheart's name in at the window.
In some charms the devil was invoked directly. If one walked about
a rick nine times with a rake, saying, "I rake this rick in the
devil's name," a vision would come and take away the rake.
If one went out with nine grains of oats in his mouth, and walked
about until he heard a girl's name called or mentioned, he would
know the name of his future wife, for they would be the same.
Lead is melted, and poured through a key or a ring into cold water.
The form each spoonful takes in cooling indicates the occupation
of the future husband of the girl who poured it.
"Now something like a horse would cause the jubilant maiden to
call out, 'A dragoon!' Now some dim resemblance to a helmet would
suggest a handsome member of the mounted police; or a round
object with a spike would seem a ship, and this of course meant a
sailor; or a cow would suggest a cattle-dealer, or a plough a
farmer."
SHARP: _Threefold Chronicle._
After the future had been searched, a piper played a jig, to which
all danced merrily with a loud noise to scare away the evil
spirits.
Just before midnight was the time to go out "alone and unperceived"
to a south-running brook, dip a shirt-sleeve in it, bring it home
and hang it by the fire to dry. One must go to bed, but watch till
midnight for a sight of the destined mate who would come to turn
the shirt to dry the other side.
Ashes were raked smooth on the hearth at bedtime on Hallowe'en, and
the next morning examined for footprints. If one was turned from
the door, guests or a marriage was prophesied; if toward the door,
a death.
To have prophetic dreams a girl should search for a briar grown
into a hoop, creep through thrice in the name of the devil, cut it
in silence, and go to bed with it under her pillow. A boy should
cut ten ivy leaves, throw away one and put the rest under his head
before he slept.
If a girl leave beside her bed a glass of water with a sliver of
wood in it, and say before she falls asleep:
"Husband mine that is to be,
Come this night and rescue me,"
she will dream of falling off a bridge into the water, and of being
saved at the last minute by the spirit of her future husband. To
receive a drink from his hand she must eat a cake of flour, soot,
and salt before she goes to bed.
The Celtic spirit of yearning for the unknown, retained nowhere
else as much as in Ireland, is expressed very beautifully by the
poet Yeats in the introduction to his _Celtic Twilight_.
"The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niam calling: 'Away, come away;
"'And brood no more where the fire is bright,
Filling thy heart with a mortal dream;
For breasts are heaving and eyes a-gleam:
Away, come away to the dim twilight
"'Arms are heaving and lips apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.'
"The host is rushing twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niam calling: 'Away, come away.'"