The Book of Hallowe'en Part 4

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 gra.s.sy 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-G.o.d 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 n.o.body gets old and G.o.dly and grave, Where n.o.body gets old and crafty and wise, Where n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.ds 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 h.e.l.l. 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tle "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-sh.e.l.ls 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 friends.h.i.+p 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.