Links and things for Samhainn

Seeing as I didn't get around to doing one of these this time last year, I figured I'd make up for it now...

Before we get into the links, I thought maybe it would be good to clear up a few things. Samain is the Old Irish spelling; Samhain is modern Irish or Gaelic (Gàidhlig/Scottish Gaelic). In Gaelic, you might also see the spelling Samhainn or Samhuinn, the latter being the "old" way of spelling it (Gaelic orthography was overhauled and modernised in the 70s, so spellings became more consistent).

Samhain can refer to the month of November – mi na Samhna or Samhain in Irish, or an t-Samhain in modern Gaelic, for example (click on the links for audio files; note that the pronunciation differs according to dialect). You might see claims that it's incorrect to refer to the festival as "Samhain" because that's the name for the month, not the festival itself, and instead, more specific names should be used – Oíche Shamhna ("Samhain Eve" – the eve of October 31st) and Lá Samhna (the day itself, November 1st) in Irish, or Oidhche Shamhna and Là Samhna in Gaelic. This is true; these are the specific terms that refer to the specific eve/day that's celebrated today as Hallowe'en and you should probably use them if that's what you're talking about specifically. But... As we see in the myths, "Samhain" is used to refer to the festival (in a pre-Christian context), and that's an entirely valid way of referring to the festival in that sense. The reason it's used this way in the myths is probably because the festival was originally celebrated over several days – some sources say three days and nights, others suggest the festival was up to a week long, so it's not just referring to a particular day or night. In context, it's clear that the festival is being referred to, not the month in general, so it's fine to use "Samhain" as a shorthand for the festival. It is good to bear in mind who you might be speaking to and what you're specifically talking about, though. Sometimes, in the context of a conversation, you might want to use the modern terminology rather than the shorthand.

Clear as mud?

Cool.

So now we've got the terms out the way, let's look at what Samhainn is all about and what you can do to celebrate it.

As usual let's start with a video! This is Gaol Naofa's most watched video on our Youtube channel, which just goes to show how popular the festival is. Here you'll find just about everything you need to know to get started:

If you'd prefer a little light reading, then how about starting with some articles from Tairis?

• Samhainn – introduction to the background and history
• Celebrating Samhainn – some practical ideas for you to include in your celebrations
• Carving Turnips – how to carve a traditional tumshie (if you want to)
• Samhainn Divination – outlining some traditional divinations and games that can be done

You've probably heard that Samhain is "the Celtic New Year," but is it really? Where does that idea come from, exactly? Very probably it comes from the nineteenth century antiquarian John Rhys (with a little help from some friends), and I've outlined the evidence I've found so far about that in The New Year. Your interpretation may vary...

Feasting is a huge part of the celebrations, and of course it's a time for divination, games, and giving out treats to guisers. Some of the divination "games" that are played (or performed, if you prefer) involve the use of traditional dishes, including:

• Cranachan – a Scottish dessert of whipped cream flavoured with toasted oatmeal, honey, and whisky, usually served with raspberries. At Samhainn, charms can be mixed in as a way of telling the recipients future
• Treacle bannocks – used in a very messy game where they're covered in treacle and hung above the head so the players can try to catch their "prize" using only their teeth
• Bairín breac – an Irish tea loaf which is traditionally baked with charms mixed into it (measurements given in cups)
• Colcannon – buttery mashed potatoes with cabbage (and often onions); another medium for the charm game

Though if you prefer a basic sponge cake works well for the charms, too.

Protective rites are an important part of the proceedings at Samhainn and the Irish Parshell cross is traditionally made and hung over the threshold to protect the occupants of the house. If you keep livestock, you can make one for the barn or stables, too. A Scottish tradition sees a special bannock being baked and then thrown, piece by piece, over the shoulder as an offering to dangerous or evil spirits as a means of keeping them at bay.

Guising, mummers plays and strawboys are also an important part of Samhainn traditions, and also have a protective tone. You can find out more about them in Ireland here. Typically guising (kids going around in disguise collecting treats from neighbours) – which can be seen as the precursor of modern-day trick-or-treating – involves the performance of a piece of entertainment to "earn" a treat. The trick, if necessary, is traditionally done later, in secret. There are lots of traditional songs or rhymes that are associated with guising, but jokes are acceptable, too.

If you'd like your kids to get into the spirit of things and learn some traditional songs, here's one example, called Oíche Shamhna, Oíche Shamhna – sung to the tune of "Frère Jacques" (video included at the link).

Finally! Here's a link not directly relevant to Samhain celebrations per se, but it's a wonderful write-up of a trip to Tigh na Cailliche (a place very dear to my heart!), from Scott at Cailleach's Herbarium. According to tradition, the stones at the shrine (which are said to represent the Cailleach and her family) are brought out from the shrine every Bealltainn and put away inside for the winter, at Samhainn, so now's the perfect time to read all about it!

The roll call of the dead

For only the second time since I became a Gaelic Polytheist I have a family member to add to the list of ancestors I'll be honouring at Samhain. The first was my granddad, who got to meet his first great-grandchild (my son) before he died only three months later on New Years' Day, 2006.

Now I get to add my father-in-law, who died earlier this year. It was very sudden – and tragic and awful – and it's left us all in an aftermath of differing proportions. My mother-in-law lost her husband of nearly 50 years, my husband lost his father, my kids lost their Papa. To me, he was more a father than my own ever was.

The best we can tell, he fell head-first down the stairs. He didn't try to stop his fall or cry out, so it seems likely that he lost consciousness and it was only when his head met the floor that his fall came to a very sudden stop. He lost a lot of blood and sustained a massive head injury, but the way he landed also meant that his chin was pressed into his chest and he was unable to breathe. He was without oxygen for at least 20 minutes, as far as we can tell, probably closer to 30 minutes. By the time the paramedics/EMTs arrived his heart had stopped, but they managed to revive him – somehow. He never regained consciousness, however. A small mercy, I think. After it was confirmed he was braindead, and his immediate family had managed to come to his side and say their goodbyes, life-support was switched off. He died at 11.55pm on June 15th, 2016, after only a matter of minutes.

It's been a difficult time since then, in some ways. We've all had to navigate our own grief while accommodating each others', trying to be understanding and sensitive to everyone else's needs as we reach different stages of grief ahead of, or behind, other people. The first night he was in hospital, while Mr Seren was by his side and they were still hoping that there was some hope left, I went outside and prayed (throughout the whole ordeal I stayed home with the kids; we felt it was better for them to remember him as he was, and the days were just too long for them to handle anyway). I prayed and I felt a presence at my shoulder, a brush against my hand, and then a stillness and a peace. I knew then that he was gone. He wasn't coming back from this.

Acceptance was the easy part for the adults. My father-in-law was a complicated man and he was hard to know in some ways. He was a man of many passions but life had worn him down. Towards the end he was an unhappy man – a little lost after his retirement, depressed and lacking in purpose, angry, in pain from his bad knees, and unable to play the music he so loved. He'd given up in many ways. He was struggling and didn't go out much. In that respect his death has come as a relief and a release. As tragic as it was, he was ready, and in some ways that's a comfort. At his funeral, it was standing room only. Over 150 people came to pay their respects. That was comforting, too. Flawed as he was, he touched a lot of people's lives.

None of that's offered much comfort to the kids, though. My son, in particular, is having a hard time parsing the loss of his Papa. He's found it difficult to go to his grandparent's house knowing that he won't see his Papa there, even though all of this things are still there. The ghost of his memory hangs heavy in Tom's mind, and he found the funeral a little overwhelming, not knowing what to expect, not knowing how to deal with his emotions. We talked and tried to walk the kids through everything that was going to happen, but I suppose for a child hearing it and living it are very different things. It was a humanist service and the stories that were told were not stories of the Papa the kids knew, really. The Papa who went to seminary but left, the Papa who cycled the Highlands every weekend, and who met Nana at an archaeological dig. The Papa who left the house and did stuff. The Papa who was young once. That wasn't the Papa they knew.

When I broke the news of their Papa's death to the kids – the morning after, when they were supposed to be getting ready for school – they were shocked. We'd prepared them as best we could and had told them that it was going to happen, but again, hearing it is different to living it. Aside from asking how and why, Tom's only comment was, "But I didn't really know him yet. It's not fair!" The funeral only compounded that.

The family is planning to go over to Derry at some point – where my father-in-law's mother came from – so we can spread his ashes in the place his mother was born, per his wishes. Hopefully it will help Tom come to terms with it all and find some closure, but in the meantime, with Samhainn approaching, I'm trying to think of things to do to help him (and Rosie) keep processing. He finds it hard to talk about his emotions at the best of times so it's a fine line between helping him open up and picking at an open wound.

This is the first time we've had someone to add to our ancestor altar, as a family, so I'm going to try and involve the kids in what we'll be doing – finally getting some photos printed so we can set up a small altar to our ancestors, sharing stories (including old favourites like The Time Papa Got Stuck in the Bath, Twice, And Only The First Time Was Really Accidental, followed by The Time Papa Decided To Remove A Wasp's Nest, Drunk, And Surprisingly Fell Off A Ladder), and each of us adding a stone to the cairn out in the garden. We've been working on some decorations (Rosie's crafted a clay headstone with "RIP Papa" on it), and we will have our usual feast (Rosie has requested stovies, a speciality of Papa's), and leave a space for our ancestors to join us. I'm also planning on taking the kids to the beach so we can each pick a stone to bring back and place on our cairn. Knowing Rosie, she'll probably want to decorate it first.

So as always at this time of year, the ancestors hang heavy in the air. But this year, one more face joins the crowd, and now the kids have something more tangible to frame what, exactly, "the ancestors" really means to them. One more face joins the crowd. Goodbye Papa.

The saga of the costume, and other things...

The run-up to Samhain was so busy I forgot to do a links post for it... You can blame Rosie for that one, mostly.

It's been nearly eight years since we moved into this house and it's only recently that I've learned that the valley we live in officially has its own microclimate – notable enough that sciency types study it and stuff. While everywhere else around us, even just five minutes away, is under a foot or so of snow, some winters we've barely had a frost let alone a hint of a snowflake, that kind of thing. Over the years I've noticed that the seasonal shifts tend towards extremes around here (in comparison with the surrounding area) and they're either very late or very early. In particular, things like fruit ripening on bushes or trees can happen up to a month or more later or earlier than just down the road, so if I were to time our celebrations by the usual markers – things like first frost, first fruits, and so on – then sometimes I'd be celebrating one festival at the same time as another, or with only a week or so apart.

Since that's become clear I've mostly stuck with aiming for the fixed dates (or as close as I can), but at the same time I've been trying to learn the seasonal rhythms of our little valley. Living by the coast there are obvious markers like the storms we get in spring and autumn (and throughout the winter), and there are those things that aren't much different from anywhere else around us – the length of the days and so on. One thing that Tom said recently has stuck with me: He's been looking forward to winter because he gets to see the stars again. He doesn't just mean in the sense that he often has to go to bed before the sun sets during the summer; round here, during the summer months the night sky never gets truly dark, especially at the full moon. Not compared with the winter, anyway, so in the summer months you only get to see a few stars twinkling away up there. When the nights draw in, though, you can make out bands of the milky way (we live far away enough from any cities that we get a good view of the night sky in winter), and it's a very different view. So one thing I've come to view as an indication that winter is on its way is the night sky; when we can see that thick band right above our heads, it's definitely not summer anymore.

For festivals like Samhain, it's hard not to celebrate it on the fixed date anyway, especially since it's so tied up with Hallowe'en. The kids are at that age where Hallowe'en is serious business now, and Rosie (who's always been more keen on playing dress up than Tom has) in particular has taken her costume very seriously this year, so our preparations for Samhain this year have seemed like they've almost been never-ending. She's been so excited about Hallowe'en – wearing her costume to school for the parade, going out guising, bringing home all those SWEETS (dear gods, the sweets) – that she's actually been losing sleep over it. Several times she'd come down and tell me she couldn't sleep because it's just so exciting. In particular, her plans for her costume have been very specific and she just couldn't wait for everyone to see it. And guess who had to make it, eh?

I'll spare you a good chunk of the details, but suffice it to say that at the tender age of eight, Rosie is officially in the grip of But What Will My Friends Say?, along with It's All Wrong And Nobody Understands, GUH. It's not quite as bad as the teenage years yet, but dear gods I could do without the child insisting on the most inappropriate costumes for an eight-year-old, ever (no, Rosie, you will not be wearing an opaque blue body stocking and nothing else). So there was something of a battle over what a certain somebody was going to wear, and of course, at this time of year, that's the most important thing when you're eight. In Rosie's world, at least.

The situation reached crisis levels at one point, mainly because her first idea wasn't possible in the "I'll order you the costume and that's sorted" sense, at least, and every other idea she had wasn't possible (or appropriate, I felt) either. Rosie wanted to be a supervillain – none of your goodies, please (although Madam Vastra from Doctor Who was briefly considered), so we had a limited range to work with, let's say. She was hesitant to have a costume tailor-made in case it turned out badly and she looked silly, but in the end I convinced her to at least let me try. If it did turn out badly, I promised her we'd do something else instead.

So, long story short, I ordered two pairs of leggings – one red, one black – and two tops, also one red/one black, and set about cutting them in half and sewing them together to make a Harley Quinn costume. One of Mr Seren's white t-shirts was sacrificed to make the cuffs and the collar. Rosie's experience of the character is from the Lego Batman game, so she wanted the original jumpsuit version of her costume (and frankly, given the other options/iterations of the character, that was the only version she was going to get), although she conceded that a two-piece version would be more practical than the jumpsuit itself. Thankfully she didn't find the jester-style hat appealing, so I didn't have to make that.

If I do say so myself, it all turned out rather well in the end. We'll ignore the fact that after unpicking the leggings apart to sew the one red and one black leg back together, I ended up sewing two left legs. But never mind.

Tom's costume was easy, he wanted to recycle his Minecraft Steve costume into an Enderman (another character from the game, who throws pumpkins, apparently), although it took a little fixing after rescuing it from the garage, and we had to make a new head. Then disaster struck – the school decided that kids wouldn't be allowed to wear make-up, face paints or masks "in case it scared the little ones." Which is kind of the point, no? Weapons and other kinds of props like wands weren't allowed, either, nor "inappropriate footwear," so Rosie decided that she didn't want to wear her costume for school if she couldn't do the whole thing. Parents and family were no longer invited to the parade, either (hmph).

The kids were both outraged and upset (it was a last minute announcement which made it worse – most of the kids at school had already decided on their costumes and it meant that most of them either couldn't do them properly, or at all because of the new rules). Tom was at least eventually allowed to take his costume in so the teacher could decide if it was too scary to wear for the parade, but all in all it hardly seemed worth the effort. Nana came to the rescue for Rosie and dumped a load of old dance clothes on her, which used to belong to my nieces, so she eventually decided to go as "America" in red, white and blue, with a hastily made statue of Liberty as a pointed comment about her FREEDUMBS, which had been unjustly taken away by the head teacher's arbitrary and illogical decision-making (the kids were allowed masks, weapons and/or face-paints for the evening disco, along with footwear of their choosing, so the ban on "weapons" and such was hardly a safety reason). So for school, this is what we ended up with:

And then for Oidhche Shamhna itself (Hallowe'en) Tom wore his costume again and Rosie did her Harley Quinn costume. Because I'd made it, damn it, and she was gonna wear it:

We got some coloured spray for her hair but it's not very obvious in the photos, but she was very happy with how it turned out in spite of the fact that she hated every second of having her hair sprayed. She's decided she quite fancies having black hair, though.

So the run up to Samhain was mainly taken up with making all of the costumes and props that were needed, and then trying to get the house in order in time for the evening. After spending so much time on making stuff, a good clean and tidy was desperately needed.

The night before our celebrations began I carved the turnips and pumpkins:

And felt pretty pleased with myself because I managed to carve a turnip without ballsing things up
with the knife going accidentally off course, for the first time ever.... There's something satisfying about a hard won carved tumshie. I missed a trick with the pumpkins, though – the cat pumpkin was Rosie's choice, but I could've done the other one to match Tom's Minecraft pumpkin. Oh well.

Decorations were put up and the Saturday went verrrry slooooowly for two excited kids who were forced to tidy their rooms and make their beds. Eventually it came time for them to go guising (or galoshans, as we call it in this neck of the woods) and Mr Seren took them out with the neighbour's kid. I decided to do a beef stew with dumplings for our evening feast because it was something I could mostly leave to its own devices while I was concentrating on fielding guisers, and it's a good wintry meal so it seemed apt.

While the kids were out I set up a bucket of water for the dookin', and lit the whole house by candle-light. The lanterns were put up at the window to let the guisers know they were welcome, and I did some quick devotions to get the evening officially started. We didn't get nearly as many guisers as we usually do – normally the streets would've been full of kids in costumes with a harried parent in tow, but I think maybe because it was a Saturday night a lot of people were at parties instead this year.

The kids came back with a good haul of treats and they set to the dookin' with enthusiasm. The neighbour's kid looked at us as if we had two heads when he realised we were going to actually dunk our faces in the water for the apples, though – he'd only ever done it by trying to spear the apples with a fork. He and Rosie opted for that method, which I think is what they do at school (though they didn't hold it between their teeth like you're supposed to), while Tom did it old style. Unsuccessfully, but doggedly nonetheless:

Eventually, as water began to spread all across the floor and he was no nearer to getting the apple, I told him to use a fork. It took some persuading and he wasn't going to make things easy on himself, though, so he did the teeth method with his fork. And finally won his apple after many, many attempts.

We had dinner as the neighbour's kid was called for his, and then he came back and we carried on our wee party, but as usual all of the excitement of the day saw them tire out pretty quickly. Rosie was barely awake by 9:30pm so it was time for her to shower to get all of the dye and face-paints off.

I'd seriously overdone things and needed a good sit down by that point – I could barely walk – so once the kids were tucked in the rest of the night was pretty low key for me. Before bed I spent some time making some offerings to finish off the evening, chatted with the ancestors (with honourable mention of Eddie and Yoda, the two pets we've lost in the last year – Rosie's convinced Eddie's been around), welcomed in the winter and made prayers of blessing and thanks, and left some food out for any ancestral visitors overnight, and then went to my bed. I slept a deep and dreamless sleep that night.

I was still suffering for my efforts the following day – it was worth it, though – and I decided to stay home while Mr Seren took the kids to the in-laws for the afternoon. The car journey wouldn't have done me any good. That wasn't before Mr Seren and the kids went out to buy a new iPad to replace the one that had finally given up the ghost (har), and they came back with the most tasteful artwork for me, ever:

Which now graces my living room, on the wall above the sofa where I typically sit. It was an apology from the kids, really – they'd got into trouble that morning for not listening to either Mr Seren or me, in spite of dire warnings, and I'd eventually had to go tell them off. Standing up was a little too much at that point and I couldn't help but burst out crying, so that freaked the kids out and made them feel terrible. But I was very touched by their thoughtful gesture.

By the time they came bearing woolly cows I was feeling a lot better, and I managed to sain the house and put the meal I'd left for the ancestors outside as an offering. I still haven't managed to find a satisfactory sort of shelf (or something) to put near the pond, where I can put my offerings out of the way of the dog's reach, so they're still currently going up on the wall on the other side of the patio. I need to figure something out for that.

But we've successfully ushered in the winter here, I think – I hope. As much as I'm not exactly the greatest or most enthusiastic seamstress, I ended up enjoying the opportunity to make both costumes for the kids. It allowed me to do a little extra protection work, too, cutting or sewing or painting deiseil, and sewing in or painting a few protective symbols for them for when they'd be out and about. It did mean that the preparations for our celebrations were a little lengthier than usual, but that in itself provided an opportunity for time to contemplate and meditate on things, and it also seems apt in the sense that winter itself seems to be taking its time in arriving, although the predictions are that it will be a cold and bitter one, once it does.

In spite of the fact that I over did things (physically, at least) I'm glad that for once I managed to do all of the things I wanted to. I chose to push myself. I suppose in a way I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, in spite of my limitations these days. I know, though, that it's not the trappings that are important, as such – doing is all well and good, but it's kind of pointless if you don't have that connection, that communication... But at the same time those trappings help provide a focus, and become devotional acts in themselves, and it's something I wanted to do. In a way, I think it's something I needed this time, too.

Auntie Pancake's Samhainn party

Samhainn started early for us here, with a flying visit from my nephews (brought here with my mother, who was on babysitting duties for their half-term holiday). Their journey up here was fraught with difficulties and delays - first mum blew two wheels on her car during an attempt at avoiding a pheasant, and had to postpone her travel plans by a day to get them fixed, and then they got stuck on the motorway after a traffic accident closed the whole northbound side of the road. Then, just as they approached Glasgow as it was getting close to midnight, they discovered that the motorway that would take them to here was closed for the whole night. Mum gave up and got a hotel in the end.

So they got here over a day late in the end, and it put our original plans a little off kilter. The most important order of business for the weekend, however, was going to happen come hell or high water, and you'll have to excuse the poor quality of photos because my camera charger is still missing, so I had to rely on my mother's expertise with her tablet. I'd promised the kids a Hallowe'en party, and aside from the chocolate pancakes (which my youngest nephew insists must happen for breakfast everyday when he comes to visit, and he now calls me Auntie Pancake because he loves them so much, and as far as he's concerned it's probably all I'm good for, but oh well. Who doesn't love a good pancake?), the party was all that had to happen that weekend. It was a little disorganised because I'd hoped to prepare a bit more before we did it, but the kids wouldn't wait. I'd managed to put up some spooky decorations beforehand, at least.

Once mum arrived with the boys we took some time to catch up and have lunch, and mum unloaded the car of all the officially tasteful crap she was offloading on me (I now have a decorative cow bell that needs a home...). She'd brought a photo album of all of her relatives (and some of my dad's) so we took a look through all of those and she told me who they all were and so on. Most of them I'd seen before, but until now they were always just faces in old photos. Mum told stories and memories she had of each of them, and Rosie was especially interested in it all, and found "Gertrude" ridiculously hilarious as far as names go. We spent a good hour looking at all the pictures and talking about family stuff.

I appreciated mum bringing the photos up, and hopefully one day I'll get copies of them so I can make my own album and write stuff down about everyone. I only have a few photos of my grandparents and great-grandparents that I can show the kids, and we look at them each year at Samhainn as part of the ancestral focus for the festivities, so for once we could go a bit further back and now I have a few more names to add to my prayers.

For the kids, though, the best bit is the games and the food, so after an afternoon out we got down to the fun stuff. First of all we had to do the costumes. I'd bought them all matching pyjama onesies with glow-in-the-dark skeletons, so they put those on (even my eldest nephew, who's not so keen on dressing up). Then we had facepainting - Tom opted against it, so he brought his scythe out so he had something "special" for his costume too:

After that we did some lantern carving. I took charge of the tumshie while the kids got on with the pumpkins, and we talked about why we carve lanterns, and why I was carving a tumshie instead of a pumpkin. My mother, who's always insisted Hallowe'en is an American invention, made a point of sniffing loudly in disapproval.

We initially divided the kids into two teams so they could scoop one pumpkin each, but Tom's always been squeamish about pumpkin innards and soon lost interest. Rosie and my youngest nephew eventually decided it was hard work and they'd rather design the faces we were going to carve, so Tom joined in with that instead. My eldest nephew went at the pumpkin guts with gusto, though:

We have a deal now. He's going to come up every year to help.

After we'd got the faces carved, we lit our lanterns with great ceremony (the kids let off Hallowe'en themed party poppers I'd bought them as I lit the lanterns with a quiet prayer), and then we filled the room with candles so it was all atmospheric. While dinner was cooking - just a load of finger foods and stuff like that - we started on the party games. There was the requisite dookin', which my nephews had never done before and who thought it was the best thing ever:

Youngest nephew wasted no time trying to "help" his older brother, as you can see.

After the dookin' and then Lots of Food we had a disco in the dark (so they could see all of their skeletons glowing), and more games, like musical statues and that kind of thing. Eventually we wound things down with Dr Who and popcorn before bedtime.

And that was part one of our celebrations. Part two came the week after, on Oidhche Shamhna itself, and once again the house was tidied and made ready, fresh lanterns were carved in preparation, and I was forced to get up way too early to do Rosie's facepaints so she could look the part in the school parade that day:

Tom was originally going to go as an Enderman from Minecraft (following on from his Minecraft Steve costume last year), but in the end he was rather taken with the scythe and the costume he ended up with, so he went as the "Master of Doom" instead. Rosie went as "Devil Girl," which is based on a personalised character she likes to play in Minecraft.

The kids were keen to go guising that night, and we invited one of Tom's friends to join us - he lives on a quiet street where nothing much goes on, so we offered to take him around. We invited one of Rosie's friends as well (just to be fair), but she was going to her dad's that evening, so the friend's mum invited Rosie round to play and go guising a bit early on their street instead. She returned with a good haul, and she and Tom tucked into some spooky strawberries I'd attempted while they waited for Mr Seren to get home, and for Tom's friend to turn up. A friend sent me a link to some spooky foods, but in the end I only had time for these and some lychee "eyeballs." The kids were impressed, though, although I still suck at piping chocolate:

As it got dark we lit the lanterns and made some offerings to get the evening started, and when the friend turned up we had a bit of a disco while Mr Seren had a few minutes to sit down and take a deep breath after getting home from work. Then they went out, leaving me to hand out treats and do battle with Mungo, who was determined to say hello to everyone no matter how much I tried to keep him out of the way. Doors are trivial obstacles when there are people here to give Mungo fuss.

Most years we have loads of kids come to our door, so I'd prepared a load of goodie bags to hand out in advance so I could stay on top of things and - for once - not have to panic about running out too soon. Obviously that meant that I got about half way through the goodies when it started humping it down outside - it was an absolute torrential downpour. Most people gave up after that so we were stuck with masses of treats leftover, along with all of the goodies the kids brought back.

Going by experience now, I didn't bother cooking a huge meal seeing as the kids would be so loaded on sweets, and tired, by the time they came home. So we just had a wee picnic in the living room, with some fresh bread, cold meats, and finger foods etc. The kids shared their sweets out and traded the ones they didn't like with each other, and we watched a bit of Casper together while they chilled out before bed. I was going to let them stay up so we could have a wee vigil together, past midnight, but they were so exhausted after all the excitement they didn't make it past ten. At least that left me with time to myself, to do some devotions and my own observances without distraction. I was too tired and sore to sain the house, so that happened later on, but a little time for some contemplation was just what I needed.

I woke up early the next day - before dawn - and got up to see the sun rise. It was a little chilly that morning, but pretty still and dry, and I was greeted by the birds swooping around and enjoying the first rays of light. I made some more offerings, putting the food I'd left out overnight for the ancestors, and sained the house later on.

As busy as it all was, it felt like a quiet, but successful celebration this year. The only thing we didn't get done was finishing off a hobhouse that Rosie wanted to make to replace the one she made a while ago. The salt dough we used that time just hasn't lasted, so this time we went with proper clay (I offered to help Tom make one too, but he opted to sculpt a dinosaur instead, to keep a mosaic dinosaur he made recently company). The hobhouse is just waiting to be painted and then put in place, but Rosie's procrastinating on it because she's worried it's going to be horrible and it's all going to go wrong, and the brownie will be unhappy with it. Such is the nature of Rosie. She's been asking to write a blog, though, and while I think she's too young to have her own blog online, publicly, I've suggested that she could write a post about making her hobhouse, which she can post here once it's all done. She's keen to do that and she's also wanting to give the brownie their new home, so hopefully that will happen soon.

Getting ready for Samhain

For as long as I've been doing this - for ten years now - I've been striving to find a good balance between focusing on doing (or more to the point, figuring out what the doing entails) and experiencing.

To begin with, in the early days of figuring out what I could do and how I could express myself in ritual as I celebrated the festivals, I concentrated an awful lot of energy on making sure I did stuff and making sure that what I was doing was as authentic as I could make it. Was I doing it all right? In the right order? What if I missed something out that was really important? Over time I learned - with a little wisdom from friends - that perhaps I was concentrating on the details a little too much. I realised that I needed more of a balance between doing stuff and actually appreciating why I was doing these things. I realised I was getting so caught up in trying to make sure I was doing things right that I was getting distracted from actually appreciating the experience.

So from that point I eased off on worrying about the details and focused more on the experiential side of things, focusing on why I was doing all of this, and who for. And I suppose it became easier to do that because I had a little more experience anyway - once I accepted that not everything was always going to go according to plan, not everything would be able to fit in nearly, I realised that I'd managed to figure out a comfortable rhythm and pace for my ritual expressions, and had a better idea of the kind of things that worked for me, things that didn't, and where my own limits were. I was becoming more confident, which helped free up space to concentrate on finding more of a connection with the gods, spirits, and ancestors. I'd finally accepted that it's all well and good trying to fit a bunch of stuff in, but if you try to do so much that you end up too focused on ticking off things on your To Do list than actually appreciating why you're doing any of it, things will always be more stressful than spiritual. Which kind of becomes self-defeating, really.

Things evened out a little and I felt more settled. But then as the kids got older and began asking questions, I realised that while my personal practice was sorted, all of a sudden I was having to figure out how to explain things to the kids and engage them as well. The good thing about all that is that it keeps things fresh. As their perspective changes, so does mine. The hard part is that as they're constantly changing and growing (mentally, emotionally, physically), you have to readjust your own ideas about what they can really grasp, and try to gauge just how much they can take on board at any one time. But on the whole, as a family, we have a good rhythm going when it comes to celebrating the festivals now - I know what I'm doing (hurrah!), the kids know what to expect, and rub their hands with glee at the prospect of yummy food and fun stuff to do. And so on. So that's good. Something's working.

At the same time, I'm still trying to maintain that balance between the doing and the experiencing, as well as balancing the needs of my kids along with my own. As much as we have the bare bones of our festival practices down, I like to add in a few different things for each festival so things stay fresh. It's easy (for me, I guess I should add) to get complacent about what we're doing when it's all been done before, and I don't want the kids to get bored, either. So finding new stuff to do - even if it's just trying out a new recipe or two for the feast, buying new cookie cutters to make different kinds of decorations or treats this time round, and so on - is something I always try to think of, to add to our festival repertoire and make the occasion special.

So for this Samhain, I've started getting things going already. One of the things I like to do for each festival is clean and tidy the house from top to bottom - as best I can, considering I'm not always physically capable. At the moment my back's in an OK state (touch wood) so I've decided to get on with some of the bigger tasks that need dealing with. First off, there's decorating the kitchen, which we haven't done anything to since we moved in, and it was starting to look shabby. So all the dents in the walls have been filled in and smoothed out, and painted over. All of the random crap that accumulates on the kitchen sides has found a home (or been stuffed into a cupboard or drawer if it can't be thrown out, more like), and pictures that have needed a place to hang have finally gone up (including the very tasteful cow-themed coasters I got last Christmas, which I vowed were too good to use and needed to be framed).

Next up is tackling the hallway, which is also looking a little worse for wear as well. We have some more bits and pieces that need to find a home up on the walls, but also, since we're getting to Samhainn, I want to finally get around to making a dedicated space for my ancestors. I'm pretty limited in what I can do there because I don't know much about most of them (my grandad was adopted, my nan won't talk about her family except in general terms, so there are big gaping holes there). Things are a bit less murky on my mother's side, but I don't really know any names beyond my grandparents. I know mum has a fair few photos, though, so I've asked her to send me some. Most of them are pretty crap in quality, but there's enough that I can get started with - if not up on the walls, then in a photo album that I can annotate, or something. My original plan was to put them up in the kitchen, on the wall opposite my wee shelf shrine, but Mr Seren isn't too keen on the idea of eating his dinner in the presence of a wall of dead people (least of all his mother-in-law's relatives, I guess!). So I'll figure something out.

And finally, my nephews are coming up this weekend for a short visit with my mother (it's their half term next week), so I'm planning a Samhainn party for the kids this weekend. With the kids wanting to go guising with their friends at Hallowe'en it's much easier to do the partying separately now. We've yet to sort costumes out for the day, but Tom has a glow in the dark skeleton onesie that he wants to wear for the party and I might get my nephews and Rosie some matching outfits so they can all dress up. I have some pumpkins and tumshies at the ready for carving, and I'm looking up some ideas for vaguely traumatising party food - Frankenstein's finger sandwiches, ghostly fishcakes and "eyeballs" made out of lychees to go in some witches' brew, that sort of thing. Seeing as I was never allowed to celebrate Hallowe'en as a kid my mother will no doubt disapprove, but tough.

New video: Samhain

As soon as the leaves start to change colour, everybody starts getting excited about Samhain...

So continuing on with the series of videos we've been doing on the festival year, we've just finished the latest one in plenty of time for Samhain. This is the longest one to date, but that's because there's just so much to talk about and it's difficult to do it all justice in five minutes or less. Kathryn took the lead on this one and did an amazing job - I think this is my favourite video so far:

We asked people over on the Gaelic Polytheism group to help us out and contribute some photos and we got an amazing response from folks. We couldn't fit everybody's contributions in, but we appreciate every single photo that we received and we hope we can find a home for them in future videos. Thanks to each and every one of you for your support!

Hand in hand with this video I think it's a good time to repost one of the videos we released last time, around Lùnastal:

The Prophecy of the Morrígan from Cath Maige Tuired is as relevant to Samhain as it is to Lùnastal, so it's well worth a watch (again)! Also in our festival playlist, we have a video on turnip carving if you're looking for some pointers; you can find it by clicking on the wee arrow next to the "playlist" link in the top left of the video, then scroll down towards the bottom, or else I've done a walk-through guide over on Tairis. Some links you might find useful:

• Samhainn
• Celebrating Samhainn
• Carving Tumshies
• Samhainn Divination

Those of you in the southern hemisphere might find this video worth watching instead, however, as you head towards Bealltainn:

The Samhain video completes the four Quarter Days in the Gaelic calendar, and we have two more videos to come on Midwinter and Hogmanay traditions to complete the festival year as a whole. After that, we intend to come full circle, as it were, and do a video on the festival year in general (which is probably where we should have started, but oh well!). And then... Who knows? If there are any subjects you'd like us to tackle, that relate to Gaelic Polytheism in some way, feel free to weigh in on the comments!

Saying goodbye

Holding an impromptu funeral for a hamster wasn't exactly something I had in mind for the weekend when I got up on Saturday morning, but alas, poor Hamish, he is no more. He is an ex-hamster. He has shuffled off this mortal coil. Expired. Demised. Gone to meet his maker...

Poor wee Hamish.

As much as my 90-year-old nan has anticipated otherwise for a long while now – she's been saying things like, "Of course, I shall be dead soon," for the last twenty years or so now – up until Hamish's passing the kids hadn't really had to deal with death themselves (beyond a goldfish). It's something we've talked about, as you do with your kids, and it's something that Rosie in particular likes to talk about every now and then because the concept of not existing anymore is fascinating to her. Tom, on the other hand, has something of a shit happens kind of attitude towards death, and if he has any deep thoughts about it then he tends to chew them over himself late at night.

Rosie takes it quite personally that Tom got to meet my granddad (who I called "Poppy") before he died, even though Tom was only a baby at the time and doesn't remember anything. But as far as Rosie's concerned, Tom has had something that she hasn't, and that's not fair. In processing these feelings, spurred on by recent events and Samhainn just gone, Rosie snuck a poppy home on Monday –one she'd made at school as part of their Armistice Day topic for the day. She made it specially, dedicated "To Poppy, From Rosie."

But alas, poor Hamish. Tom was out with a friend at the time of our discovery, and Mr Seren was working so it was just me and Rosie when we found him. We'd taken the dogs out and stopped off at the rope swings in the woods to make up for the fact that she hadn't been invited to the cinema with Tom (something she also took quite personally), and on our way back Rosie asked if we could get the hamster out for a spin in his exercise ball. Upon our return, we went to his cage to get him out and found him tucked up snug but lifeless in his wee house. I'm guessing he died in his sleep, so there are worse ways to go I suppose.

There were tears and denials at first. There were gentle goodbyes and tender scritches behind his lifeless ears. I cleaned out the cage and found a wee box to put him in, and then after Tom got home and Rosie broke the news to her brother, we went into the garden and laid Hamish to rest. It took some persuading to convince Rosie that we needed to do something with him – she didn't want to face saying goodbye at first – but eventually she agreed that we could bury him. While I dug the hole between the rowan tree and the ancestor's cairn in the flower bed (which I built just after we moved here), Rosie hugged the little box protectively and chattered nervously. Tom...basically avoided acknowledging the situation and played with Mungo as if nothing extraordinary was going on. He was a good hamster, and it's sad, said Tom. And that was about the end of it as far as he was concerned. Outwardly, anyway.

Rosie insisted that she should do the honours and lay her little friend to rest, so once the hole was ready she put him gently in it and said goodbye, and talked about what a good hamster he was. He'd always poke his head out of his wee house when we sat down for dinner, and he'd always come out or go in to his house through the window instead of the door for no apparent reason. He preferred climbing everywhere instead of using the tunnels. He liked to terrorise Mungo, who jumped on the sofa every time he saw Hamish's ball heading towards him, and would whimper pathetically until the ball went away. He liked to run through a see-saw, over and over again, when he had a run around in his play pen. He was indeed a Good Hamster.

We covered him over with soil (and a brick, just to make sure the dogs or foxes don't go digging), and I said some words too, and then we went back inside to the warmth for hugs and snuggles and looking at pictures of Hamish. The kids were both a little quiet but seemed to be processing things; Rosie decided she was happy that he was buried in the garden, because now he can make friends with the worms, and they're good for the soil so Hamish must be too, and she can go out and say hello every now and then and check he's OK. He won't be lonely, and that's the main thing.

Late last night, as I was attempting to wrangle some cake decorating, a butterfly began flying around the kitchen. I've no idea where it came from or how it got into the house but there it was, a small tortoiseshell fluttering around the kitchen at gone 11pm on a November Tuesday, hovering around the sideboard where Hamish's cage used to sit. In Irish belief, a butterfly is often said to be the soul of someone who's returned to the place or people they loved. Maybe that applies to hamster souls as well as people...

The Slender Man (duhn duhn DUHN)

People often talk about the "thinning of the veil" at this time of year, along with unseen, intangible dangers being afoot. There's talk of the dead coming back to visit – usually in a good way, not a threatening way – but also those tricksy kinds of spirits being about, which must be protected against. Just as the guisers who knock on your door should be appeased with offerings of sweets and good things to eat, so must the spirits who might not be made of sugar and spice and all things nice. Really, you can't say for sure if you're dealing with kids or Other when there's a knock at the door.

So there's a tension of sorts, throughout the night. Throughout the whole period, really, depending on how long you see it as lasting – three nights, seven nights, up until the Old Style date...However you see it. The season turns, and while it shifts, things are unbalanced. The things we do at this time help us navigate our way through the potential pitfalls and dangers, and see us safely out the other side.

It's something I've been thinking about this year in particular for a number of reasons. Partly because the kids are old enough to be really getting into the spirit of guising and thinking hard about their costumes and making careful choices, and asking what it's all about (and also learning about it at school, prompting more questions). It's also kind of been reinforced by the fact that a neighbourhood dog broke into our house on Wednesday for the express purpose of attacking one of our dogs – nobody was hurt, thankfully – but in the wintry gales that have been hammering these parts, which blew open the gate that allowed the dog to roam in the first place and seek out Mungo...well. Unpredictable forces are very much afoot.

The kids have been thinking about their costumes long and hard in the run up to this year's celebrations, and while Rosie has changed her mind on a near daily basis, Tom hit upon an idea and stuck with it from the off. After considering a meerkat and several other options, Rosie decided she wanted to dress up as Lily Munster (she thinks The Munsters is hilarious "even though it's old"), but coming up with a costume for that was difficult so eventually she decided to go as a vampire bat instead. I say bat, but it ended up more like a butterfly...And less of a vampire because she decided against wearing the vampire teeth in the end. To be honest, all she really cares about is the face-paints, so she ended up more than happy.

Tom, on the other hand, decided that he wanted to dress up as Steve from Minecraft. The kids are both keen on the game and enjoy building their own little worlds in it, which they've populated with all kinds of things, so there's that as a reason. There's also a rumour going round at school that the Slender Man is living in one of the local woods, and as the story has grown and evolved the kids have come up with all sorts of ideas about it; since many of the kids at school are also Minecrafters, the story has had elements of the game added in – you have to make certain potions to kill the Slender Man, or use a certain kind of sword or pick and so on. I'd never heard of the Slender Man before but apparently it's some sort of internet meme crossed with a typical urban legend of the spooky child-kidnapper variety. It's also kind of crossed over into Minecraft anyway, because a type of character in the game – Enderman – was named that because it kind of looks a bit like the Slender Man. So in Tom's world, Steve from Minecraft is the perfect choice of costume, because who better to do battle with the Slender Man? Since everyone's in costume at Hallowe'en, the Slender Man might leave the woods and try and take some kids. Something Must Be Done.  

So that was that; as far as Tom was concerned, this year it's serious business. He wanted the costume to be made entirely out of boxes but we managed to persuade him towards a compromise on just a head and body, seeing as the legs and arms would make the costume unwieldy and I wasn't convinced I had enough paint for that much cardboard. So after several days of gluing and painting, we got Tom's costume sorted, and he was very happy with it. As I was painting the head he came up to me and gave me a hug and said, "Mum, I really appreciate you doing this for me." *Sniff*

Every year they have a parade at school for Hallowe'en so the kids can go in costume for the day, so everything had to be ready by Thursday morning and I had to make sure I was up early enough to do face-painting duty. And lo:

Mr Seren had to drive them to school in the morning because it was so wet and windy, and Tom insisted on wearing his costume on the way. His fellow school-mates cheered him as he walked across the playground (Mr Seren had to hold on to him to make sure he didn't blow away) – Tom was chuffed to pieces – and then disaster struck: one of the "bat cuffs" I made for Rosie's arms blew off, never to be seen again. Rosie was distraught because everything was ruined and Mr Seren ran home and I made an emergency replacement. In her excitement at getting to school and doing Hallowe'en stuff all day, she'd left her school-bag at home so he had to go back in anyway.

A little later on Mr Seren and I went to the parade – they didn't have prizes this year because there were apparently complaints from parents that some kids got upset about not winning last year, which is a shame. And a little silly, I think, but ah well. I spent the rest of the day preparing for the evening, and so ghostly gingerbread and mummified cupcakes were baked, decorated, and divvied up with some more treats for the guisers, pumpkin soup was made with the innards of the pumpkins I'd carved out the day before (kindly donated by my mother-in-law, and waste not want not, right?), and the house was set in order.

In our planning ahead, the kids had asked for a proper good Hallowe'en feast and they both asked for roast chicken, so that settled that. I was going to do a dessert as well but in the end I figured that the kids would have enough sweets after going out and it wasn't really necessary (and how true that turned out to be). One of Tom's friends was dropped off so he could go guising as well, and while Mr Seren took them out, I stayed in to keep an eye on dinner and hand out treats.

I'd carved out the lanterns the day before – two pumpkins and a tumshie:

Rosie was tired and didn't want to draw a face on one of the pumpkins, but Tom was more than happy to do one (the one of the left). I ballsed up carving the tumshie yet again this year – accidentally cutting too far through the left eye – but ah well. I put them up in the window to let the guisers know we were open to visitors, and so our evening began.

Mr Seren said the streets were pretty quiet while they were out (it was raining), but we got quite a good turnout and we'd run out of treats by the time the kids got home. The guisers arrived in a steady trickle and they all did a turn; most of them told a joke – I don't think we had any songs this year – but one lad in a neon pink lycra onesie did some...interpretive dance? I gave him points for trying, anyway. One of the last couple of guisers to arrive before the treats ran out didn't have a joke or a dance, but instead had a riddle. What does the fox say? They decided the answer was that the fox doesn't say anything, but I pointed out that they do make a noise, and this was very conveniently demonstrated later on in the evening with a fox barking loudly for a good long while. It's the first time I've heard them in ages and the timing was very apt; winter really is here. The foxes made themselves known last night, too. For hours.

Anyway, back to the evening. Meanwhile, on their way round the village the kids collected an inordinate amount of sweets and Tom had his chance to do battle with the Slender Man after all: A guy dressed in the costume was lurking in the bushes outside his own house, waiting to ambush guisers as they came up the driveway. Slender Man leapt out at the kids as they walked up the drive...and Tom was totally oblivious. Chatting away to his friend, in the dark, and with the box on his head, he didn't see or hear the guy leap out at first. Once he realised, though, he rose to the challenge and charged, screaming, arms waving wildly, with Rosie and friend in tow, while the Slender Man legged it into the house. They got and extra big bag of treats for bravery and Tom was mightily pleased with himself.

Dinner was ready when they got home, so after the friend was picked up and taken home we tucked into our meal, accompanied by lantern-light. After that the kids went through all of their treats and picked out a few to enjoy then and there, and then it was time for homework. Things had gone on later than anticipated so we didn't have a chance to play many games or tell stories, but the kids didn't mind at all. Guising is where it's at now (though we'll do some dookin' at some point to make up for it), and knowing that things don't always fit in on the evening, we've been spreading things out a lot more than usual. Usually we get the photo albums out and talk about family – the great-grandparents they never had a chance to meet, or don't remember, and so on – but we did all that while we were making decorations in the lead up to things, on wet weekend afternoons. Mr Seren told us stories about his gran, Rosie's namesake, and his myriad aunties, and I told them about my grandparents, and so on. I need to get some photos gathered together – I don't have many of the family members that I don't really remember myself.

The kids are sleeping in separate rooms now – Rosie's moved into the spare room because Tom has a tendency to wake up early and she likes her sleep. She's wanting it decorated for her Christmas present, and while she's yet to decide on the colour scheme, she knows she wants lots of things up on the wall, so she can create a Wall of Wonder. I've given her an old picture she likes, that needs re-framing, and I've made her some decorations to go up as well (and for Tom, too). Rosie mentioned wanting some hearts up on the wall, so while being somewhat incapacitated again (though much better now, thankfully) I decided to have a go at knitting some hearts. I'm not the greatest knitter in the world, but she likes them, wonky as they are, and I've strung three of them together to hang up. On the first heart, I sewed in a rowan charm, and finished it in time to surprise Rosie with it as part of our festivities. Tom has one in his room already, but Rosie's room didn't have one yet. She chose where she wanted to hang it, and I put it up for her:

While they'd been out I'd had the chance to begin my devotions – to the ancestors, gods and spirits – so after they went to bed all I had to do was sain the house. I was about ready for bed myself, but after a rest I got to it and made some final offerings for the evening. I slept like the proverbial dead that night, and dreamt of them, too.

Tumshies!

If you're looking for some ideas for turnip carving, here's a good link:

Turnip Lanterns (hop tu naa)

From the Manx curriculum website. There's an old photo of 1950s school kids with their lanterns and pictures of more recent examples too.

Best laid plans and all that...

After all my planning ahead and idle musing on things a few weeks back - and then feeling all smug and organised - Samhainn rolls around and we here in our corner of the universe celebrate it with the delightful aftermath of Norovirus.

Which was nice.

If ever there's a sign that winter's here - you know, aside from the frost and snow we've had - the dreaded Great Affliction is pretty much a dead giveaway, I suppose. So things were a little more scaled back than planned, although all of the important stuff got done, fun was nonetheless had, and I think it was - all in all - a success.

The downside of being a parent is that your kids will inevitably bring varying kinds of snot and bugs home from school so you get to live it all vicariously through one child and then another before you get to experience the delights first hand (my child-free friends are grinning smugly at me through the internet, I can feel it...). By the time it comes around at least you know what to expect, I suppose. On the plus side, by the time the eve of Samhainn rolled around we were all over the worst of it and we were all feeling just a little tired and delicate rather than properly unwell, so at least we were able to celebrate. The feasting element of the proceedings were not something I was particularly keen on, though; nor was Mr Seren. But for some reason, as if my own body was trying to tell me something, I'd had a real craving for gingerbread at the weekend so I'd done some festive biscuits:

And that was all I could really stomach on the eve itself; the ginger helped settle any rumblings quite nicely. I was originally going to let the kids decorate them but Rosie couldn't stomach it and Tom only decided to help out once I'd done most of them. He was very proud of his efforts, though. "The red's blood, mum," he said helpfully. I'd baked a whole load of cake with the intention of sculpting a festive cake, too, but that just wasn't going to happen in the end - so much for great ideas.

But the morning before the big evening rolled around, the kids came bouncing in excitedly to wake me up so they could have breakfast and get ready for the Hallowe'en parade at school. Tom was going to go as Optimus Prime, but after wearing the costume to the Hallowe'en disco the week before and finding it way too small he opted for his old Power Ranger costume instead. Rosie went as "Bat Cat," as planned. She wanted some face paints to complete the look so I did what I could there, with the hasty help of Google that morning:

So long as she had whiskers she didn't really care, so she was very pleased with her look in the end. I managed to drag myself along to the parade later that morning to cheer them on, and the school was awash with anticipation. And also Norovirus, probably. 

There's nothing like a good bout of lurgy to motivate a thorough housecleaning session, is there? So the house was shipshape and in good order for the evening festivities, and I got some decorations up at least, in between a nap or two during the day. While we did get round to making some more decorations during the half-term holiday we haven't done a seasonal mural yet; our Great Affliction scuppered any plans to do it at the weekend, along with a Hallowe'en party Tom was invited to and the party games I'd had planned.

My mother-in-law had got us a large pumpkin for carving (they were on special offer so she got us one spare), so I'd bought two smaller ones for cooking - in the comments of my previous planning post Judith suggested a bread and butter pudding baked in a pumpkin that sounded delicious, and I was going to give that a go until the Great Affliction happened. The other small one was intended for soup and another lantern if I could manage to get the flesh out without having to cut it up. By Samhainn eve I'd already scooped out one of the small pumpkins so I could use the flesh for soup, which I'd done at the weekend while the kids were ill (and my husband promptly ate the whole lot before anyone else got some, barring a small mug I'd had, to see how it was). By Wednesday, although I had at least one pumpkin ready to carve I wasn't convinced I could stomach doing even that one. Mr Seren chipped in and carved the big one into a Stormtrooper's helmet (ish), though, so I knew we'd have at least one. But when I picked the kids up from school the fresh air did me good and I knew I'd have to keep them occupied until they could could go out guising, so they were set with the task of designing a lantern each. The flesh from the second smaller pumpkin went to another batch of soup, instead of pudding. For that we made do with cake (or the kids did, anyway).

I usually carve the lanterns the night before Samhainn, as a way of kicking off celebrations. That night I usually devote to the ancestors in particular, while I carve and make some opening offerings. But given the delicate nature of my condition that evening, carving was out of the question then. I didn't have the opportunity to get any tumshies at all so this year there were no turnip lanterns - that was a real shame, but while I wasn't convinced I'd manage the pumpkins, to begin with, I knew there was no way my nose/stomach would stretch to accommodate the stench of turnip. But what we ended up with still did the job nicely:

Tom designed the cross-eyed one, and Rosie decided the scariest thing she could think of was a spider after flicking through Google and being told that no, butterflies weren't scary and E.T. was way beyond anything I can manage. I royally ballsed up the legs on hers, but I think Tom's came out pretty good.  Young sir was very pleased with it, anyway, and we had fun talking about all the scary things that would be afoot that night as they got creative.

By the time the carving was done it was time to do dinner - I did stovies, since the soup needed a bit longer to cook (we had that the next day). And then we lit the lanterns and put them in the windows at the front of the house to let the guisers know that they were welcome, with great ceremony and excitment. Mr Seren did some games and dancing with the kids while I was doing the fiddly bits of carving and then dinner, but we just didn't have time for party games proper in the end. Seeing as many of the games are food-based, that was probably for the best! But after dinner the kids did go out guising and that's really all they wanted to do, so as far as they were concerned it was the best Samhainn EVAR. For me, though, it's another year without having tried treacle scones. A sad Gaelic Polytheist am I.

While Mr Seren was out with the kids, I had the opportunity to get my ritual on. The guisers were very thoughtful and managed to space their visits out between my opening offerings, then my prayers and devotions, saining and putting up some rowan and so on. It was a little piecemeal in some respects, but none the worse for that.

For once I could sain the kids' room properly without disturbing them - I usually have to do it after they've gone to bed, so I had some luxury to be more thorough there and give the room a good sprinkle. This time, seeing as no one was in the house, I tried burning some juniper, too - I couldn't do too much to get a good smoke going and fill the house, but I have to say the bit of smoke I did generate certainly has a powerful quality to it.

Tom was the first to come back, dashing in to go to the loo (and having to do battle with his costume first). Mr Seren and Rosie arrived not long after, Rosie sporting the manic grin of the happily E-numbered and well-sugared. They had been very successful on their tour of the street, with lots of generous treats from neighbours - it was a fairly quiet night compared to some years previous, but I know a lot of the kids' classmates had also been laid low by the bug that we'd had, too, so like us I think folks had a bit more to hand out to those that did turn up. Mr Seren said the kids did well with their entertaining; at the first couple of houses they were pretty much bricking it and Rosie didn't get much further than the first couple of lines from Twinkle Twinkle Chocolate Bar before trailing off into the Shy Mumble, but by the fifth house or so Tom had already fired into a festive cupcake and had to be held back by Mr Seren before he ended up spraying crumbs over whoever answered the door while Tom tried to do his joke through a mouthful of cake. I'd thought about going out with them, but I'd had such a busy day already I didn't want to over do things - my back is doing a whole lot better but I'm still being a little cautious.

After the kids were back we all gathered in the kitchen to share out the sweets (and a good number of apples and nuts, too), then it was time for homework while the last of the guisers knocked at the door, and then it was bedtime. For once, I didn't have to take the lanterns away from the window because the sweets had run out.

Seeing as I'd already done my ritualling before the kids went to bed I had the opportunity to spend a quiet, candle-lit evening in contemplation and just relaxing. Of course for Samhainn there's a big focus on the ancestors and I had a candle up in the window and invited them to come for a visit if they so wished. I had food out for them, and made offerings to them, and I spoke to them and drank a toast to their memory. And the same to the spirits too, with offerings of peace.

I made offerings to the Cailleach and an owl (the cailleach-oidhche in Gàidhlig) struck up a thoughtful song in the woods nearby. I made offerings to my ancestral deities and a crow cawed off in the distance. I thought back on the year and gave thanks for all the good things that have happened, and thought about the maybe not so good things too. I prayed for blessings, for my family and friends. And I looked up at the stars and out into the night and I listened for a while, and breathed in the cold, slightly smokey air, and that night I slept like the dead, and if I dreamed I've no idea what it was.

At the weekend we went to the beach and I made my offerings to the river and the sea. On Monday night - Bonfire Night, here - the fireworks filled the sky, and as the air was heavy with smoke I chopped up the pumpkin lanterns and buried pieces of them at four points around the outside of the house. I can't beat the bounds around the house with a flaming torch but I can reinforce the boundaries in my own way. We didn't manage to get to a fireworks show (they were at the weekend and we didn't realise, but the local event was Disney-themed anyway, so it was probably for the best - we don't do Disney in this house), but one of our neighbours always has a display in his back garden so the kids didn't miss out. Poor Mungo practically had a nervous breakdown, though, wrapped in a towel and cowering beneath Mr Seren's desk. Our older dog doesn't mind them (plus he's basically deaf now) but Mungo can't stand fireworks.

So that was Samhainn. Not quite how I'd planned but it all came together in the end, I think.

An Cailleach Bheara

A post on Samhainn will follow shortly, but in the meantime I just wanted to bring a beautiful short film to your attention.

I can't embed the video here, it seems, but follow this link to watch it - it's only eight minutes long and the visuals are quite beautiful. The film references a few traditional stories about An Cailleach Bheara, although it concentrates on one in particular; I found this ages ago and meant to post it, but lost the link and it's only now I've found it - in good time for the season, perhaps!

Anyway, if you haven't seen it already, enjoy.

The Gruagach, the Guaigean and the Geige

 A gruagach is a local land spirit in Scotland, who is said to look after cattle in the summer pastures, to make sure they don't wander off and come to any harm. It seems that to a certain extent the gruagach has come to be conflated with a brownie, which is probably not too much of a stretch considering the fact that they are both helpful to humans (with caveats), and will both take themselves elsewhere if you give them clothes.

In a lot of lore about spirits, you tend to find that offerings are very much encouraged when trying to build a relationship with them, but too much gratitude will backfire spectacularly. The gruagach is helpful so long as they are treated right; it is traditional to leave some milk for them in the hollow of a special stone, with offerings given to them at Bealltainn as well, and in some places the offerings are kept up (though unfortunately the one video I've seen about it has now been taken down). Traditionally, if their offerings are neglected the gruagach might not look after your cattle, or worse - they might deliberately lead them to harm. In many ways, the gruagach bears all the hallmarks of a pre-Christian local deity, even if their name might not be known anymore, but according to some the gruagach may be a ghost of someone local, who haunts the glens and looks kindly on people.

Thomas Pennant and Martin Martin both write about the gruagach in their work dating back to the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and you can find an essay on the gruagach in one of Pennant's volumes. Their name refers to their long hair (a motif that points to their Otherworldly nature), and usually they're female. In some parts of Scotland, like on Skye, they're more likely to be male (and tend to be the default explanation for how a pretty young maid might have got pregnant out of wedlock while she was up on the summer pastures).

So in general, they seem to be the kind of spirits that we want to propitiate, and it all seems quite simple. Looking through the Carmina Gadelica late one night last week, though, I found some interesting notes on the gruagach in Volume II, which have coincidentally good timing for Samhainn:

Gruagach, a supernatural female who presided over cattle and took a kindly interest in all that pertained to them. In return a libation of milk was made to her when the women milked the cows in the evening. If the oblation were neglected, the cattle, notwithstanding all precautions, were found broken loose and in the corn; and if still omitted, the best cow in the fold was found dead in the morning. The offering was poured on 'clach na gruagaich,' the 'gruagach' stone. There is hardly a district in the Highlands which does not possess a 'leac gruagaich'--a 'gruagach,' flag-stone--whereon the milk libation was poured. I have seen such stones in Arran, Kintyre, Gigha, Islay, Mull, Lismore, Kerara, Lorn, Iona, Tiree, Coll, Barra, South Uist, Benbecula, North Uist, Heisgeir, St Kilda, Harris, Lewis, Sutherland, Ross, at Culloden, Cawdor, Lochaber, and in various other places. All these oblation stones are erratic ice-blocks. Some of them have a slight cavity into which the milk was poured; others have none, the libation being simply poured on the stone. In making the oblation the woman intoned a rune--

'A ghruagach, a ghruagach,
Cum suas mo spreidhe,
Cum sios an Guaigean,
Cum uap an Geige.'

Brownie, brownie,
Uphold my herds,
Keep down the 'Guaigean,'
Keep from them the 'Geige.'

There is probably no district in the Highlands where the 'gruagach' could not be fully described. A woman living in the remote island of Heisgeir described her so graphically and picturesquely that her interested listener could almost see moving about in the silvery light of the kindly moon the 'gruagach' with her tall conical hat, her rich golden hair falling about her like a mantle of shimmering gold, while with a slight swish of her wand she gracefully turned on her heel to admonish an unseen cow. At intervals he seemed to hear her mellow voice in snatches of eerie song as she moved about among the grassy ruins of the old nunnery--all silent now of the holy orisons of gentle sisters.

 CGII

The thing that interested me the most was the mention of the 'Guaigean' and the 'Geige' - it's not something I've seen much about in Scottish lore in general. In another note from Carmichael (at the same link, as above), there is a description of the Geigean:

Geigean, Righ Geigean, Geigean, King Geigean. This was the term applied to the man who presided over the death revels. These were held in winter. Lots were cast, and the man upon whom the lot fell was elected king of the revels, over which he reigned from midnight till the old cock crew. A tub of cold water was poured over his head and down his throat, after which his face and neck were smeared with soot. When the man had been made as formidable and hideous as possible, a sword, scythe, or sickle was placed in his hand as an emblem of office...

A rhyme common among boys at play says:--

'Thaine mi o chri-chas,
Thaine mi o chruai-chas,
Thaine mi o Ghigean,
Thaine mi o Ghuaigean,
’S thig mi uat-s’ ma dh’f haodas mi.

I came from small peril,
I came from great peril,
I came from Geigean,
I came from Guaigean,
And I will come from thee if I can.

'Gigean' and 'Guaigean' are probably forms of 'Geigean.'

So the immediate conclusion seems to be that the offerings to the gruagach are in the hopes that the gruagach will then protect people against the Geige (or Géige, as it should be - Carmichael was terrible for not bothering with accents in the first two volumes especially) and the Guaigean. Considering Carmichael's comments on the Righ Geigean we might suspect that the latter perhaps represent spectres of wintry danger or death, effectively. And/or, considering one of the tales in the first link, of the ghostly gruagach who protected against murrain, she works against sickness spreading.

My first thought was to wonder if the rite described might have something to do with Samhainn (since the festival marks the start of winter); Carmichael was notoriously leery of mentioning Samhainn at all, albeit for a brief entry in the notes in volume II and a few other passing mentions, so he's unlikely to spell it out and it wouldn't be any wonder that he was vague on that point. Pulling out my trusty copy of The Gaelic Otherworld, Ronald Black's notes refers to the Righ Geigean ritual as being performed, specifically, at the beginning of winter (see p457), so that seems to confirm it. It's interesting that the taking of lots seems to mirror a similar practice from Bealltainn, where the men would come together and take turns, blindfolded, to pick out piece of bannock from a basket or cloth. In this case, at Bealltainn, whoever got the burnt piece of bannock called the cailleach beal-tine would effectively take on the burden of failure in the coming season; it would be assumed that they would struggle, in order to allow the rest of the community to prosper. It seems a similar idea is intended for the Righ Geigean - they suffer, so others don't have to.

It's not the only instance of Samhainn practices echoing those found at Bealltainn; it seems the practice of making offerings - by throwing pieces of bannock over the shoulder, with a prayer said - to keep away threats from livestock and family was performed at both Bealltainn and Samhainn. Interestingly, according to Dwelly, a guaigean can be defined as either "a thick, little round cake," or else "a short, stout man or boy." A géige, on the other hand, is primarily a branch or sapling, but can also refer to "a young, superfine female, nymph."

I've not found much else on the Géigean, aside from some hints that it may have been related to the urisk (or ùraisg) who often get lumped in with the brownie and gruagach as a kind of helpful spirit. This is a little confusing, because the ùraisg seems to have something of a more mischievous reputation than the others, but is generally harmless and solitary, preferring to hang around waterfalls or streams. If they happen to live near a farm they might also help out around the farmstead if given milk or cream. So not much like the dangers hinted at in Carmichael's prayer. They tended to have a wilder appearance than the gruagach, though, sometimes being described as half-goat, half-man or quite frightening to those who could see them. According to John Gregorson Campbell, at least some of them did have some association with wintry elements:

"A man passing through Srath Dubh-Uisg (near Loch Sloy at the head of Loch Lomond) on a keen frosty night heard an urisk on one side of the glen calling out: Reoth, reoth, reoth. "Frost, frost, frost."

This was answered by another urisk calling from the other side of the glen: Ceige-reoth, ceige-reoth, ceige-reoth. "Kick-frost, kick-frost, kick-frost."

The man, on hearing this, said, "Whether I wait or not for frost, I will never while I live wait for kick-frost." And he ran at his utmost speed till he was out of the glen."

Black, The Gaelic Otherworld, 2005, p106.

Ronald Black's notes on this say that Reoth and Ceige-Reoth more than likely refer to the names of the two urisks in the glen - Frost and Jack Frost, "as it were" (op. cit. p363). Furthermore, Ceige-Reoth here refers to the Géigean, ceige meaning "a mass of matted hair" and - aside from Ceige and Geige being very similar - the word denotes the "wild figure" of the Géigean himself.

All things considered, confusing though it might all be, it offers some food for thought for the coming season.

See also here, if anything, in case you're wondering how to pronounce guaigean!

Planning ahead

Seeing as Samhainn is a pretty Big Deal round here it's one of the few festivals in the year where everyone gets excited and I can really make an effort to Do Stuff without appearing to be a complete loon. There's everyone putting up the terribly tasteful decorations and carving tumshies or pumpkins, there's the Hallowe'en parade at school and the guisers coming to our door...It's a great occasion and especially good for being able to get the kids involved.

Considering the fact that it's a pretty Big Deal it's going to require a bit of planning ahead. We got some really huge tumshies last year, which were perfect for carving, so hopefully we'll get some more this year. Seeing as they're quite tough to carve (instructions for carving here, if you're looking for tips) they're not really something I can do with the kids just yet so I've tried to carve a pumpkin over the last few years as well. Maybe it's just the crappy plastic tools we have for the job but they're quite tough too, but while the stench of tumshie is quite evocative, shall we say, the innards of a pumpkin reminds my son of brains, apparently:

We couldn't get one last year but I've promised Rosie a pumpkin soup at the least this year. Seeing as I've no idea how to do that I still need to figure that one out... The kids want to go guising this year, for the first time, so if it's cold (we've already been having frosty nights so there's a good chance) the soup will be good for warming them up when they get back. The kids can help me make it, and some Brodick bannocks to go with it too. And maybe some butter - they have great fun yelling out the rhymes to make the lumps come.

Seeing as the kids want to go guising, they'll need to prepare some jokes or songs if they want their sweets (or hot dogs - one of the houses handed out hot dogs last year, they were very popular!). Trick or treating isn't really a thing here; you only knock on doors that have lanterns put out to indicate that guisers are welcome, so sweets are pretty much guaranteed, and you have to perform a piece of entertainment or the people you're prevailing on can tell you where to go. As the song goes:

Tell a story,
Sing a song;
Dae a dance,
Or oot ye gang!

Although jokes and nursery rhymes are what you'll probably hear, there are plenty of traditional songs too. "Tell a Story" is one, but I think the best known one is Heigh Ho for Hallowe'en:

Heigh Ho for Hallowe'en!
When the witches a' are seen,
Some black and some green,
Heigh Ho for Hallowe'en!

There's another one I quite like:

Hallowe'en a nicht o' tine
A can'le in a custock.

A howkit neep wi' glowerin' een
To fleg baith witch and warlock.

(Or: Hallowe'en a night of fire/A candle and a cabbage stem./A tumshie lantern with scowling eye(s),/To scare both witch and warlock.)

But I suspect the kids might decide to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Chocolate Bar" because they like doing the actions. I think that's about all they'll need to know about guising for now - they can get up to the mischief part when they're older...

We made some decorations last year but seeing as it's the October holiday I think we might just make some more...I think it's going to be a long week ahead this week. We also have our seasonal mural to think about, and now we have a fish tank in the way of where the murals tend to go I think we'll be adapting it to make a background for the tank.

It wouldn't be a proper Samhain without some games for the kids, so a bit of planning is required for that, too. I'd like to try the divination game with the crowdie, where you whip up a big bowl of the cream, honey and oatmeal and mix some charms into it for everyone to try and dig out. Before now I've felt the kids have been a bit too young for it - small parts being included and all - but my youngest is five now and I think she's old enough to get the gist of things and not end up having to make a mad dash to hospital. I'll need to figure something out because I don't have any charms yet, but that shouldn't be too difficult. I might also have to adapt the game slightly because there are worse things in the world today than getting a charm that suggests you won't ever marry. Otherwise, we'll have the usual games - dookin' for apples, blind man's bluff, musical statues and musical bumps and so on. I also have what looks like a decent recipe for treacle scones I can use for that game, so hopefully I'll finally get around to trying that too.

So as usual there's a lot to fit in, including time to do my own thing, of course. Some of our plans will probably fall by the wayside, as it usually happens, but at least I'm in a more physically capable state to make a go of things this year. With the kids wanting to go guising the feasting part of the proceedings will probably take a backseat to the more important aim of the kids making themselves feel thoroughly sick, but I like to round off the celebrations with a nice meal the day after too, so that can still get done. Then of course there will be saining to be done and offerings to be made. And perhaps a story or two to be told, for the kids.