Old Halloween Customs From Ireland

Halloween Beliefs and Customs in Ireland Ireland has a literature of Halloween or Samhain,

As it used to be called.

Most of it was written between the 7th and the 12th 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 Krakhan in Connaught,

The province which was given to the wicked Falmer after the battle of Moitura.

This cave was called the Hell Gate of Ireland and was unlocked on November Eve to let out spirits and copper-coloured birds,

Which killed the farm animals.

They also stole babies,

Leaving in their place changeling,

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,

Bring the right ones back,

Or one might boil eggshells 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 Angus of the birds,

And Thakra of the hurtling form and hymn,

Who is the ruler of the western host in Phara,

And the land of the heart's desire,

Where beauty has no ebb,

Decay no flood,

But joyous wisdom,

Time,

And endless song.

In the first century BC lived Inaelil and his queen Mab,

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 host of high inspiration continue the feast for the whole week.

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 is as if on fire for 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 Cuachran,

And he followed after the army.

The door shut.

Nera was married to a fairy woman,

Who betrayed her kindred by sending Nera to warn King Haelil 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's seed.

The next November eve,

When the doors were opened,

Haelil 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 Agnes,

The son of Tuatha Gard,

To whom in a dream a beautiful maiden appeared.

He wasted away his 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 Etal and Boal.

King Etal's palace was stormed by Haelil,

And he was forced to give up his daughter.

He gave as a reason for withholding his consent so long,

That on Samhain Princess Kaer chased from a maiden to a swan,

And back again the next year.

And when the time came,

Agnes went to the lock,

And he saw the three times fifty white birds there with their silver chains about their necks.

And Agnes stood in a man's shape at the edge of the lock,

And he called to the girl.

Come and speak with me,

O Kaer.

Who is calling me,

Said Kaer?

Agnes calls you,

He said,

And if you do come,

I swear by my word,

I will not hinder you from going into the lock again.

She came,

And he changed to a swan likewise,

And they flew away to King Dagda's palace,

Where everyone who heard their sweet singing was charmed into a sleep of three days.

Princess Etel of the race of the Tuatha,

And wife of Midir,

Was born again as the daughter of Queen Meb,

The wife of Haelil.

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 one,

Men called the she,

Even when she wins the love of King Eoket.

When they have been married a year,

There comes Midir from the land of Uth,

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 Eoket is troubled,

Because it is Samhain,

And he knows the great power the host of the air have then overtoast who wish for happiness.

Etel speak,

What is the song the harbour sing,

What tongue is this he speak,

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 word,

Brewed in the moonshine under ancient oaks,

With white pale banners of the mistletoe,

Twined round them in their slow and stately death.

It is the feast of Samhain.

In vain Eoket pleads with her to stay with him.

She has already forgotten all but Midir,

And the life so long ago in the land of Uth.

In the land of Uth there are pleasant places,

Green meadows,

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 Uth.

She and Midir fly away in the form of two swans linked by a chain of gold.

Cuchulainn,

Hopelessly sick of a strange illness brought on by Thant and Liban,

Fairy sisters,

Was visited the day before Samhain by a messenger who promised to cure him if he would go to the other world.

Cuchulainn could not make up his mind to go,

But said Laeg his charioteer.

Such glorious reports did Laeg bring back from the other world.

If all Eirin were mine,

The kingship of Yellow Bregia,

I would give it,

No trifling deed,

Dwell for I in the place I reached.

That Cuchulainn went tighter and championed the people there against their enemies.

He stayed a month with the fairyland.

Ymer,

His wife at home,

Was beset with jealousy and plotted against Thant,

But followed her hero home.

Thant,

In fear,

Returned to her deserted husband.

Ymer was given a druidic drink to drown her jealousy,

And Cuchulainn 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 exercised by prayers and by the sign of the cross were still haunted by druids.

As late as the 5th century,

The druids kept their skill in fortune-telling.

King Dati got the druid to foretell what would happen to him,

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 leave the devil as followers.

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 renegade people who no longer did them honor,

Sent another minstrel who,

After laying the ancient religious seed Tara under a 23-year charm,

Burned up the city with his fiery breath.

These infamous spirits dwelled in grassy mounds called forts,

Which were entrances to underground palaces full of treasure,

Where was always music and dancing.

These treasury houses were open only on November eve,

For the fairy mounds of Arryn are always opened about Halloween.

Where the trunks of spirits,

Fairies and goblins trooped out for revels about the country,

The old druid idea of obsession,

Beseeing of a person by an evil spirit,

Was practiced by them at that time.

This is the first day of the winter,

And today the hosts of the air are in their greatest power.

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,

A little queer old woman cloaked in green,

Who came to beg a porringer of milk.

The good people go asking milk and fire,

Upon May eve,

Wool to the house that gives,

For they have power over it for a year.

Or one might receive a fairy thorn,

Such as Oona 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.

Or one might be lured by music,

As he stopped near the fort,

To watch the dance sing,

Or 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 Moore,

Great stout,

Uncivil troll,

And Paddy Beck,

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 prily 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 sent him home a straight manly fellow.

The next Halloween,

Who should come by the same place but Paddy Moore,

And he stopped likewise to spy at the merrymaking.

He too was called in,

But would not dance politely,

Added no stories or song.

The fairies clapped Paddy Beck's hump on his back,

And dismissed him under a double burden of discomfort.

A lad called Gilish,

Listening outside a fort on Halloween,

Heard the spirits speaking of the fatal illness of his betrothed,

The daughter of the king of France.

They said that if Gilish but knew it,

He might boil an herb that grew by his door,

And give it to the princess and make her dwell.

Joyfully Gilish 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.

Princess Edain,

A daughter of king of Ireland,

Heard a voice singing on May Eve like this,

And followed,

Half awake and half asleep,

Until she came into the land of fairy,

Where nobody gets old and godly and brave,

Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,

Where nobody gets old and bitter of time,

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,

If one returned he found that the space which seemed to him but one night,

Had been many years,

And with the touch of a earthly sword the age he had postponed suddenly weighed him down.

A scion,

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 they leaned over to aid them,

The gird broke,

With the touch of earth,

Straightway.

The white horse fled away on his way home,

And Ossian became aged,

Decreed,

And blind.

Now place as much as Ireland has kept the belief in all sort 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 Tuatha were thought to appear on Sarwen,

To as late as 1910,

Testimony to actual appearances of the little people,

Is to be found.

Quote from Wentz,

Fairy Fate in Celtic Countries.

Among the usually invisible races,

Which I have seen in Ireland,

There are the Gnomes,

Who are earth spirits,

Who seem to be a sorrowful race.

I once saw some of them distinctly on the side of Ben Bulben.

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 mid-chief,

Though they too are small,

I followed a Leprechaun from the town of Wicklow out to the Carrack Seat,

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 or Leprechauns,

Are quite good-looking,

And they are very small.

The good people are tall,

Beautiful beings.

They direct the magnetic currents of the earth.

The gods are really Tuatha de Danann.

One version of the Jack-o'-lantern story comes from Ireland.

A stingy man named Jack was for his inhospitality bared 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 the 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 god of departed soul,

Was taken in Christian times by Saint Columba,

The founder of monastery in Iona,

In the 5th century.

In the 17th century the Irish peasant went about begging money and goodies for a feast,

And demanding in the name of Columba,

That fatted calves and black sheep be prepared,

In place of the druid fire.

Candles were collected and lighted on Halloween,

And prayers for the soul of the giver said for them.

The name of Saman is kept in the title,

Godíchas Sáma,

Vigil of Saman,

By which the night of October 31 was until recently called in Ireland.

There are no Halloween 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 Halloween gathering in the 18th century was milk,

In which crusted crushed roasted apples had been mixed.

It was called lambswool,

Perhaps from lamás upál,

The day of the apple fruit.

At the Halloween supper,

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 called cannon,

And the funniest things were found in it,

Tiny dolls,

Mice,

A pig made of china,

Silver sixpences,

A thimble,

A ring.

After supper was over,

All went into the big playroom,

And dived for apples in a tub of water,

Fished for prizes in a basin of flour,

And coined the token to define their wealth,

The thimble,

That he would never marry.

A ring and a nut are baked in a cake.

The nut signifies that its finder will marry a widow,

Or a widower.

If the kernel is swittered,

No marriage at all is prophesied.

It was common in Central Ireland a coin,

A slough,

And a bit of wood were baked.

The one getting the slough would live longest.

The one getting the wood was destined to die within the year.

A mouth of flour turned out.

On the table hold similar token.

Each person cut off a slice with a knife,

And drew out his prize with his teeth.

After supper the test 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 sweetheart.

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 a wave,

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 rolls the stick rapidly when it is let go.

The 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 Livlong were plucked by the children and hung up on Midsummer Eve.

If a plant was found to be still green on Halloween,

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 the tree furrow,

The sower repeating,

Hemp seed,

I sow thee,

Hemp seed,

I sow 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,

Then pulled up,

And the guest has to come out and see their sows.

One,

Two,

Three,

And up to seven,

If all are white,

All go to heaven.

One is black as Murdoch's evil,

He'll soon be screeching,

We eat the devil.

Twelve of the party may learn their future.

One gets a clod of earth from the churchyard,

Sets up twelve candles in it,

Lights,

And names them.

Fortune of each will be like that of the candlelight named for him.

A ball of blue yarn was thrown out of the window by a girl who hoed fast the end.

She wound it over on her hand,

Saying the creed backward.

When she had nearly finished,

She expected the yarn would be hoed.

She must ask,

Who hoeds?

And the wind would sigh her sweetheart's name.

In some charms the devil was invoked directly.

One walked about a rig nine times,

With a rake saying,

I rake this rig in the devil's name.

A vision would come and take away the rake.

One went out with the nine grains of oil in his mouth,

And walked about until he heard girl's name called or mentioned.

He would know the name of his future wife,

For they would be the same.

It 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.

After the future had been searched,

A piper played a trick,

Which all danced merrily with the loud noise to scare away the evil spirits.

Just before midnight was the time to go out,

Alone and unperceived,

To a salt-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 the shirt to try the other side.

Ashes were raked smooth on the herd at bedtime on Halloween,

And the next morning examined for footprints.

One was turned from the door,

Guessed or married was prophesied,

If toward the door a dead.

To have a prophetic dream,

A girl should search for a briar,

Creep through thrice in the name of the devil,

Cut it in silence,

And go to bed with it under her pillow.

Girl leave beside her bed a glass of water with a silver of wood in it,

And say before she falls to sleep,

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 yawning for the unknown retained nowhere else as much as in Ireland.

The host is riding from Nocna Ria,

And over the grave of Clutna Bear,

Called to tossing his burning hair,

And Niamh calling,

Away,

Come away,

And brood no more where the fire is bright.

Filling thy heart with a mortal dream,

For breeze are heaving and eyes are 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,

Called to tossing his burning hair,

And Niamh calling,

Away,

Come away.