Section 6. The Hallowe'en Fires.
FROM THE FOREGOING survey we may infer that among the heathen
forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread
fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or
Midsummer Day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice
can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan
ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on earth to coincide with
the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky. If that
was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites had
observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's apparent path in the
sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal calendar to some
extent by astronomical considerations. 1
But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call the
aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not to have
been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End of Europe,
the islands and promontories that stretch out into the Atlantic Ocean on the
North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the Celts, which have survived,
though in a restricted area and with diminished pomp, to modern times and
even to our own day, were seemingly timed without any reference to the
position of the sun in the heaven. They were two in number, and fell at an
interval of six months, one being celebrated on the eve of May Day and
the other on Allhallow Even or Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called,
that is, on the thirty-first of October, the day preceding All Saints' or
Allhallows' Day. These dates coincide with none of the four great hinges
on which the solar year revolves, to wit, the solstices and the equinoxes.
Nor do they agree with the principal seasons of the agricultural year, the
sowing in spring and the reaping in autumn. For 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 one ushers in the genial heat and
the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds, if it does not share, the
cold and barrenness of winter. Now these particular points of the year, as
has been well pointed out by a learned and ingenious writer, while they
are of comparatively little moment to the European husbandman, do deeply
concern the European herdsman; for 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 bisection 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, and when accordingly the
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, remote from the region now occupied by
the Celts, a similar bisection of the year may be clearly traced in the great
popularity, on the one hand, of May Day and its Eve (Walpurgis Night),
and, on the other hand, of 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 conjecture that everywhere throughout
Europe the celestial division of the year according to the solstices was
preceded by what we may call a terrestrial division of the year according
to the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter. 2
Be that as it may, the two great Celtic festivals of May Day and the first
of November or, to be more accurate, the Eves of these two days, closely
resemble each other in the manner of their celebration and in the
superstitions associated with them, and alike, by the antique character
impressed upon both, betray 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. 3
Of the two feasts Hallowe'en was perhaps of old the more important,
since the Celts would seem to 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, Old Style, has been regarded as
New Year's day down to recent times. Thus Manx mummers used to go
round on Hallowe'en (Old Style), singing, in the Manx language, a sort of
Hogmanay song which began "To-night is New Year's Night, Hogunnaa!"
In ancient Ireland, a new fire used to be kindled every year on Hallowe'en
or the Eve of Samhain, and from this sacred flame all the fires in Ireland
were rekindled. Such a custom points strongly to Samhain or All Saints'
Day (the first of November) as New Year's Day; since the annual kindling
of a new fire takes place most naturally at the beginning of the year, in
order that the blessed influence of the fresh fire may last throughout the
whole period of twelve months. Another confirmation of the view that the
Celts dated their year from the first of November is furnished by the
manifold modes of divination which were commonly resorted to by Celtic
peoples on Hallowe'en for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny,
especially their fortune in the coming year; for 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; from
which we may with some probability infer that they reckoned their year
from Hallowe'en rather than Beltane. 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 kine 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? and could
the good-man and the good-wife deny to the spirits of their dead the
welcome which they gave to the cows? 4
But 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. 5
Yet 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 all the year. Amongst
the things which in the Highlands of Scotland contributed to invest the
festival with a romantic beauty were the bonfires which used to blaze 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 some
eminence near the house, and in the evening set fire to. The fires were
called Samhnagan. 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." Like the Beltane
fires on the first of May, the Hallowe'en bonfires seem to have been
kindled most commonly in the Perthshire Highlands. In the parish of
Callander they still blazed down to near the end of the eighteenth century.
When the fire had died down, the ashes were carefully collected in the
form of a circle, and a stone was put in, near the circumference, for every
person of the several families interested in the bonfire. Next morning, if any
of these stones was found to be displaced or injured, the people made
sure that the person represented by it was fey or devoted, and that he
could not live twelve months from that day. At Balquhidder down to the
latter part of the nineteenth century each household kindled its bonfire at
Hallowe'en, but the custom was chiefly observed by children. The fires
were lighted on any high knoll near the house; there was no dancing
round them. Hallowe'en fires were also lighted in some districts of the
north-east of Scotland, such as Buchan. Villagers and farmers alike must
have their fire. In the villages the boys went from house to house and
begged a peat from each householder, usually with the words, "Ge's a
peat t' burn the witches." When they had collected enough peats, they
piled them in a heap, together with straw, furze, and other combustible
materials, and set the whole on fire. Then each of the youths, one after
another, laid himself down on the ground as near to the fire as he could
without being scorched, and thus lying allowed the smoke to roll over him.
The others ran through the smoke and jumped over their prostrate
comrade. When the heap was burned down, they scattered the ashes,
vying with each other who should scatter them most. 6
In the northern part of Wales it used to be customary for every family to
make a great bonfire called Coel Coeth on Hallowe'en. The fire was
kindled on the most conspicuous spot near the house; and when it had
nearly gone out every one threw into the ashes a white stone, which he
had first marked. Then having said their prayers round the fire, they went
to bed. Next morning, as soon as they were up, they came to search out
the stones, and if any one of them was found to be missing, they had a
notion that the person who threw it would die before he saw another
Hallowe'en. According to Sir John Rhys, the habit of celebrating
Hallowe'en by lighting bonfires on the hills is perhaps not yet extinct in
Wales, and men still living can remember how the people who assisted at
the bonfires would wait till the last spark was out and then would suddenly
take to their heels, shouting at the top of their voices, "The cropped black
sow seize the hindmost!" The saying, as Sir John Rhys justly remarks,
implies that originally one of the company became a victim in dead
earnest. Down to the present time the saying is current in Carnarvonshire,
where allusions to the cutty black sow are still occasionally made to
frighten children. We can now understand why in Lower Brittany every
person throws a pebble into the midsummer bonfire. Doubtless there, as in
Wales and the Highlands of Scotland, omens of life and death have at one
time or other been drawn from the position and state of the pebbles on the
morning of All Saints' Day. The custom, thus found among three separate
branches of the Celtic stock, probably dates from a period before their
dispersion, or at least from a time when alien races had not yet driven
home the wedges of separation between them. 7
In the Isle of Man also, another Celtic country, Hallowe'en was
celebrated down to modern times by the kindling of fires, accompanied
with all the usual ceremonies designed to prevent the baneful influence of
fairies and witches. 8
