Hello friends,
Welcome to learn about All Hallows' Eve traditions all over the world.
In Italy on the Night of All Souls,
The spirits of the dead are thought to be abroad,
As in Brittany.
They may mingle with living people and not be remarked.
The misery is heard in all the cities.
As the people pass dressed in black,
Bells are rung on the street corners to remind them to pray for the souls of the dead.
The skeletons in the funeral vaults are dressed up at the place visited on All Souls' Day.
In Salerno,
Before the people go to the all-night service at church,
They set out a banquet for the dead.
If any food is left in the morning,
Evil is in store for the house.
This is the night,
They say,
When all souls come back from the far away,
Forgotten this many a day,
And the dead remembered,
Aye,
Long and well.
Like the little children whose spirits dwell in God's green garden of Asphodel,
Have you reached the country of all content,
All souls we know,
Since the day you went.
From this time-worn world,
Where your ears were spent,
Would you come back to the sun and the rain,
The sweetness,
The strife,
The thing we call pain,
And then unravel life's angle again,
Early into the dark hush?
Was it the sigh,
Or the painted vine leaves that rustled by,
Or only a nightbird's echoing cry?
In Malta,
Bells are rang,
Prayers said,
And mourning won on all souls' day.
Graves are decorated,
And inscriptions on tombs re-read.
For the poor is prepared an all-souls' dinner,
As cakes are given to the poor,
In England and Wales.
The custom of decorating graves with flowers and offering flowers,
The dead comes from the crowning of the dead by the ancients,
With short-lipped blooms,
To signify the brevity of life.
In Spain,
At dark,
On Halloween,
Cakes and nuts are laid on graves,
To bribe the spirits not to disturb the rituals of the saints.
In Germany,
The graves of the dead are decorated with flowers and lights.
On the first and second of November,
To drive away ghosts from a church,
A key or a wand must be struck three times against the ear.
An all-souls' divination in Germany is a girl's going out and asking the first young man she meets his name.
Her husband will be like it.
If she walks thrice about the church and makes a wish,
She will see it fulfilled.
Belgian children build shrines in front of their homes with figures of Madonna and candles,
And beg for money to buy cakes,
As many cakes as one eats.
So many souls here freeze from purgatory.
In Northern Europe,
People believed that the dead returned and were grieved at the lamentations of their living relatives.
The same belief was found in Brittany,
And among the American Indians.
From Longfellow's Hiawatha.
Think of this,
O Hiawatha,
Speak of it to all people,
That henceforward and forever they know more with lamentations,
Saddened souls of dead departed,
In the islands of the blessed,
The Chinese fear of the dead and the dragons of the air.
They devote the first three weeks in April to visiting the graves of their ancestors,
And laying baskets of offerings on them.
Great dragon Fengxin flies gathering blessings upon the houses.
His path is straight,
Unless he meets with some building.
Then he turns aside,
And the owner of Tattoo Lofty edifies Mrs.
The Blessing.
At Nikko,
Japan,
Where there are many shrines to the spirits of the dead,
Masks are held to entertain the ghosts who return on Midsummer day.
Every street is lighted with lighted lanterns,
And the spirits are sent back to the other world in straw boats lit with lanterns and floated down the river.
See ghosts in Japan,
One must put one hundred rush lights into a large lantern,
And repeat one hundred lines of poetry,
Taking one light out at the end of each line,
Or go out into the dark with one light and blow it out.
Ghosts are identified by witches.
They come back especially on moonlit nights.
There is a Chinese saying that a mirror is the soul of a woman.
A pretty story is told of a girl whose mother,
Before she died,
Gave her a mirror,
Saying,
Now after I am dead,
Take out the thing that you will find inside this box,
And look at it.
When you do so,
My spirit will meet yours,
And you will be comforted.
When she was lonely,
Or her stepmother was harsh with her,
The girl went to her room and looked earnestly into the mirror.
She saw there only her own face,
But it was so much like her mother's that she believed it was hers indeed,
And was consoled.
When the stepmother learned what it was her daughter cherished so closely,
Her heart softened towards the lonely girl,
And her life was made easier.
