A traditional Scottish Halloween

by Tracey Macintosh

The nights are drawing in, the shadows are getting longer and veil between this world and the next is growing increasingly thin. Halloween will soon be upon us, with all its ghostly tales, superstitions, tricks and treats.

While this annual festival of fun and fright is celebrated throughout the world - and is now big business for purveyors of colourful costumes, suppliers of spooky home décor and even pumpkin farmers - few people realise many of its origins can be traced back to Scotland.

The name, Halloween, is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, so called as it is the night before the Christian festival of All Hallows or All Saints Day on 1 November, which is followed by All Souls Day on 2 November, (also known as the Day of the Dead in Mexico). It is a time of year to remember and honour deceased relatives and ancestors, and in many cultures it is customary to set an extra place for dinner for those no longer with us.

Halloween seems to have overtaken All Saints and All Souls Day in popularity in the UK, the USA Canada and further afield.

Historically the celebration started as the final harvest festival of the year, known as Samhain which roughly translates as summer’s end and as such the festival marked the end of summer and the start of winter. This celebration was also seen as the end of year celebration in ancient Celtic culture, with the Celtic new year beginning on 1 November.

In bygone years Samhain was a time of sacrifice to ensure survival over the harsh winter months. The last of the field crops would be stored and livestock were often killed around this festival and preserved to provide food for the winter months.

Superstition also tells that the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is at its thinnest at this time of year and our ancestors believed the souls of the departed wandered the earth. Bonfires were lit as part of this celebration to frighten off ‘evil’ spirits.

Although the industrial revolution has removed many of us from our agricultural roots, in Scotland these ancient traditions have been kept alive through the centuries in a number of ways.

’Guising’, short for disguising, is a popular Halloween tradition still very much alive. The enduring tradition of children dressing up for this time of year has its roots in disguising yourself, usually in a dark, creepy themed costume, to confuse the potentially malevolent spirits around on Halloween and make them think you were one of them.

Once in costume, ‘guising’ also has a performance aspect and children in particular would go from door to door and perform a song, recite a poem or tell a joke in return for fruit or nuts, although over the years this has evolved to include sweets and occasionally coins - essentially an offering to appease the ‘evil spirits’ at the door. This became ‘trick or treat’ in the USA and Canada and is increasingly used in the UK. The underlying meaning of appeasing mischievous or scary ‘spirits’ with offerings continues. With the added threat of a trick if the offering is not forthcoming!

Fire is still used to ward off evil. Traditionally turnips, or neeps as they are known in Scots, were hollowed out and carved into scary faces then lit from within by a candle. These have increasingly been replaced by pumpkins – usually more impressive in size and considerably easier to carve.

Nowadays the larger bonfires that were lit in years gone by tend to be left until Guy Fawkes night on 5 November.

As with all good Scottish traditions, food features at Halloween.

Tackling a treacle scone Halloween style is a sticky business! A scone (regular or drop scone) is lathered in treacle then threaded through with a piece of string and suspended from a ceiling or door lintel and one by one participants are invited to try to take a bite or two from the dripping, messy scone which is spun and swung, usually ensuring everyone is liberally doused in treacle. Perhaps a testament to the mischievous spirits abroad at this time of year!

Another popular Halloween activity, dooking for apples, is still a popular Halloween pastime and an ideal activity after the treacle scone challenge to help clean up sticky faces.

Apples are thought to have originated in the Caucasus mountains and made their way West with merchants and travellers over the centuries, becoming established throughout the UK in by the 13th century.

Many ancient cultures linked apples with fertility and in medieval Scotland a crop of apples at the end of the harvest season was a real bonus going into the lean winter months. A versatile addition to the winter larder, apples could be eaten raw, boiled, baked or even made into cider. As a source of vitamin C when many other sources were dormant, this was arguably a real wonder food for our ancestors.

Celts often tied apples to evergreen branches to help encourage the sun to return following winter and apple blossom would surely have been a welcome sight after the long, cold winter months.

Dookin’ for apples entails a dozen or so apples in a bucket or basin of water then participants need to catch an apple without the use of their hands, by dunking or ‘dooking’ their mouths into the water. A slightly more sanitised version frequently used allows a fork to be clenched between teeth then dropped into the water to try to spear an apple. Of course in the mischievous spirit of the festival, the apples should be given a good ‘shoogle’ to make sure none of them are easy targets!

As a symbol of fertility, an old Celtic legend, possibly originating from Roman invaders, suggests that peeling an apple in one single unbroken strip then throwing it over your shoulder would reveal the first initial of your future spouse’s name.

Some Scottish Halloween traditions have not survived the test of time.

Nut burning was a prophetic Samhain tradition. Betrothed couples would put two nuts together in the fire. If the nuts burned quietly the union would be a harmonious one, however if the nuts sizzled and spat this did not bode well for the forthcoming marriage. Although this custom hasn’t survived, it may be the precursor to the nuts often gifted to guisers.

Another prophetic tradition involved single men and women being blindfolded then guided into a garden to uproot Kale stocks. The kale stock uprooted was supposedly representative of a future spouse. Health, age and height of the kale stock were all supposedly predictive, and even wealth, or lack of, was thought to be indicated by soil adhering to the Kale stock’s roots. A stock with little soil on it was thought to presage poverty.

Scotland’s National Bard, Robert Burns, wrote a poem on Halloween touching on many of the traditional customs. First published in 1786, this is one of Burns’ longer poems with 28 verses.

With a rich and long history, Halloween in Scotland continues to be a thriving celebration with the roots of its Celtic past reaching many other countries. This Halloween, whether you go guising, trick or treating, throw a party with some seasonally themed games or draw the curtains, light some candles and watch a scary movie, give a thought to the echoes of our ancestors, still apparent in many of the customs and traditions we follow today.