How Is Halloween Celebrated In Scotland?

[Bugbear]

...for learning about how Lowland Scots celebrated All Hallow's Eve in days of yore is Robert Burns' Halloween:

http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/halloween.html

It is interesting to compare this work with a collection such as Vance Randolph's Ozarks Magic and Folklore, and once again note the contributions of the Scots to what we consider to be "traditional" American folklore.

T.

Thanks for posting that link, cajunscot.

From the end:

Wi' merry sangs, an' friendly cracks,
I wat they did na weary;
And unco tales, an' funnie jokes-
Their sports were cheap an' cheery:
Till butter'd sowens, (16) wi' fragrant lunt,
Set a' their gabs a-steerin;
Syne, wi' a social glass o' strunt,
They parted aff careerin
Fu' blythe that night.

(16) Sowens, with butter instead of milk to them, is always the Halloween Supper.-R.B.

* Not sure about some of what is being discussed in the passage, though.


And across the centuries:

the grub tends to be mostly stewed meat/sausage and sausage rolls... crisps also the usual vegetable soup peanuts etc. enough party food to fill a empty stomach that's for sure and well cider and blackcurrant...... hard to explain really its almost like drinking a softdrink nice strong drink with a pleasant after-taste, cordial blackcurrant is best used and any cider works at all ,i like my dry cider myself never been one for the sweeter scrumpy

oh and mind use the spare turnip for the veggie soup

[skauwt]

i`ll drink to that (the drink in question and last years costume ) heres to the halloween of 2010

[Lallans]

I understand (or so I hear) that the Celts had a harvest festival to mark the end of summer, and they thought that the barrier between this world and the Otherworld was thin at this time; both good and evil spirits could cross into our world at this time, and while good spirits were welcomed, folks dressed in scary costumes to ward off the evil ones(hence, perhaps, why we dress in costumes at Halloween). As part of the Samhain festivities and rituals, the Druids would light bonfires in the hills. It was considered good luck to light the fire in your hearth with an ember from the druid's fires, so the families that lived in the area would carry a coal home with them. According to the story, they used a hollowed out turnip to contain the burning coal. From there, we get the modern carved pumpkin. {snip}
I guess we get Trick or Treating from that tradition.

No one has mentioned that the original name for the holiday was Samhain, various spellings, pronounced sew-ron. So I have! [EDIT: Sorry Ryan, now that I don't have 20 little kids screaming around me, I see you di mention Samhain !]

And it seems this is another major contribution the Scots-Irish made to North American culture that they get no credit for, I mean in the modern mind. Explains why Halloween always seemed to be much more of a Protestant thing (in my childhood) than a Catholic one.

[Pleater]

Oh - Soul cakes. I know the Souling song.

CHORUS
A soul a soul a soul cake
Please good Missus a soul cake
An apple, a pear, a plum or cherry
Any good thing to make us all merry
One for Peter two for Paul, three for him who made us all

Go down into your cellar see what you can find
If your barrels are not empty we hope you will prove kind
We hope you will prove kind with your apples and strong beer
For we'll come no more a souling until this time next year

The lanes are very dirty my shoes are very thin
I have a little pocket to put a penny in
If you do not have a penny a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny, God bless you


The tune is a very simple one, worn down as an old penny. You can probably find it sung on the internet I expect.

But All Souls is in November and Halloween is October.

I think the old Harvest, the making of the first loaf from the new wheat is Lammas aka Marymass, at the full moon of August.

Samhein is the end of gathering, a cut off point where the Earth no longer provides. November is the blood month, when the unnecessary beasts were slaughtered as they could not be kept alive through the Winter. The rest had to manage on the hay cut dried and gathered into store until the grass began to grow again.

The tur part of turnip is the store or clamp in which they were kept (interred?) after harvesting, so they could always be got at even in the frost, they were originally called neaps, and tur-neaps became turnip. They revolutionised farming - along with the turnip chopper which turned them into small enough pieces for the beasts to eat.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

Thanks for adding that, Pleater, very interesting.

[Ryan Ross]

No one has mentioned that the original name for the holiday was Samhain, various spellings, pronounced sew-ron. So I have!

I always understood that the pronounciation was closer to "sow-an", or "sow-in", with long O sounds.

[artificer]

I always understood that the pronounciation was closer to "sow-an", or "sow-in".

As had I

[Bugbear]

No one has mentioned that the original name for the holiday was Samhain, various spellings, pronounced sew-ron. So I have!

And it seems this is another major contribution the Scots-Irish made to North American culture that they get no credit for, I mean in the modern mind. Explains why Halloween always seemed to be much more of a Protestant thing (in my childhood) than a Catholic one.

Interesting, I did not grow up thinking of Halloween as an original North American tradition; it was always linked to Europe; grew up in the Southwest. Looking at some of the other discussions, it appears to be very intertwined between different cultures over time.

* It was posted that people of the UK are blaming Halloween on the North Americans in an earlier post.

[Bugbear]

I've been debating whether I should post this link, but I might as well. Here is a recipe for Scottish pumpkin pie using haggis:
http://www.thehaggis.com/pumpkin.html

That's from Stahly Quality Foods.

I had asked if pumpkin is eaten in the UK.

[Irish Jack O'Brian]

I always understood that the pronounciation was closer to "sow-an", or "sow-in", with long O sounds.

I've always pronounced it sah-win http://www.collegewicca.com/sounds/samhain.wav