How Is Halloween Celebrated In Scotland?

[Ryan Ross]

Turnip lantern - take the largest turnip you can buy, cut off a slice so you can get at the inside and chop out the flesh as close to the skin as possible - make the inevetable gashes into eyes, nose and grinning mouth, pierce two small holes to take a string then place a stub of candle inside, ignite it through the nose hole, replace the original slice as a lid and then try to ignore the smell of charring turnip as it hangs by the string from some convenient suport.

Turnips are quite hard and the carving out is not easy nor quick.

The supermarkets set out pumpkins and Halloween tat these days and try to make a big thing of it, but it is only in the last four or five years that we have had anyone come to the door 'trick or treating'. They have battery powered orange plastic pumpkin shaped lights these days.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

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.

Of course, there's the decidedly more modern tale of Stingy Jack, who never did a really decent or generous thing in his life, and who tricked the devil into promising never to take his soul into hell. When he died, Saint Peter told him that he wasn't worthy to enter Heaven, but when he went into the darkness to find his resting place in Hell, the devil remembered his promise; he wasn't allowed to enter Hell either. The devil turned him away, but Jack said that it was too dark, and that he couldn't see to leave. The devil then tossed him a cinder of hellfire to light his way. Moving back, I suppose, to the prior story, he carried that cinder of hellfire in a hollowed out turnip lantern. So there's Jack O'Lantern.

A bit of a digression, I guess, but food for thought.

...speaking of food and British Halloween traditions, I made soul cakes the other day.


I don't suppose they're made (or even thought of) often at all, in the modern day, but I understand they used to be given out on All Souls Day(November 2). Children and beggars would go door to door, offering to pray for the release of the Poor Souls from Purgitory, in exchange for a soul cake(they're kind of like spiced shortbread, stamped with a cross). I guess we get Trick or Treating from that tradition.

[macwilkin]

...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.

[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:

[MacBubba45]

Oh - Soul cakes.
The tune is a very simple one, worn down as an old penny. You can probably find it sung on the internet I expect.
Anne the Pleater :ootd:

When I was a teenager Peter, Paul, and Mary had a nice version of it. I didn't really know what they were singing about until later in life.

[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.