Halloween Fires by Sir James George Frazer 1913
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From the foregoing survey we may infer that among the heathen forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer
Eve or Midsummer Day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on
earth to coincide with the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky. If that was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites had observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's apparent path in the sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal calendar to some extent by astronomical considerations.
But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call the aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not to have been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End of Europe, the islands and promontories that stretch out into the Atlantic ocean on the North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the Celts, which have survived, though in a restricted area and with diminished pomp, to modem times and even to our own day, were seemingly timed without any reference to the position of the sun in the heaven. They were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one being celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow Even or Hallowe'en, us it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first of October, the day preceding All Saints or Allhallows Day. These dates coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar year revolves, to wit, the solstices and the equinoxes. Nor do they agree with the principal seasons of the agricultural your, the sowing in spring and the reaping in autumn. Yet the first of May and the first of November mark turning-points of the year in Europe; the one ushers in the genial heat and the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds, if it doos not share, the cold and barrenness of winter. Now these particular points of the year, while they are of comparatively little moment to the European husbandman, do deeply concern the European herdsman; for it is on the approach of summer that he drives his cattle out into the open to crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of winter that he leads them back to the safety and shelter of the stall. Accordingly it seems not improbable that the Celtic bisection of the year into two halves at the beginning of May and the beginning of November dates from a time when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent for their subsistence on their herds, and when accordingly the great epochs of the year for them were the days on which the cattle went forth from the homestead in early summer and returned to it again in early winter. Even in Central Europe, remote from the region now occupied by the Celts, a similar bisection of the year may be clearly traced in the great popularity, on the one hand, of May Day and its Eve (Walpurgis Night), and, on the other hand, of the Feast of All Souls at the beginning of November, which under a thin Christian cloak conceals an ancient pagan festival of the dead. Hence we may conjecture that everywhere throughout Europe the celestial division of the year according to the solstices was preceded by what we may call a terrestrial division of the year according to the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter.
Be that as it may, the two great Celtic festivals of May Day and the first of November or, to be more accurate, the Eves of these two days, closely resemble each other in the manner of their celebration and in the superstitions associated with them, and alike, by the antique character impressed upon both, betray a remote and purely pagan origin. The festival of May Day or Beltane, as the Celts called it, which ushered in summer, has already been described; it remains to give some account of the corresponding festival of Halloween, which announced the arrival of winter.
Of tho two feasts Halloween was perhaps of old the more important, since the Celts would seem to have dated the beginning of tho year from it rather than from Beltane. In the Isle of Man, one of the fortresses in which the Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege of the Saxon invaders, the first of November, Old Style, has been regarded as New Year's Day down to recent times. Thus Manx mummers used to go round on Halloween (Old Style), singing, in the Manx language, a sort of Hogmanay song which began "To-night is New Year's Night, Hogunnaa! In ancient Ireland,
a new fire used to be kindled every year on Halloween or the Eve of Samhain, and from this sacred flame all the fires in Ireland were rekindled. Such a custom points strongly to Samhain or All Saints Day (the first of November) as New Year's Day, since the annual kindling of a new fire takes place most naturally at the beginning of the your, in order that tho blessed influence of the fresh fire may last throughout the whole period of twelve months. Another confirmation of tho view that the Celts dated their year from the first of November is furnished by the manifolds modes of divination which, as we shall see presently, were commonly resorted to by Celtic peoples on Halloween for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny, especially their fortune in the coming year, for when could these devices for prying into the future be more reasonably put in practice than at the beginning of the year? As a season of omens and auguries Halloween seems to have far surpassed Beltane in the imagination of the Celts; from which we may with some probability infer that they reckoned their year from Halloween rather than Beltane. Another circumstance of great moment which points to the same conclusion is the association of the dead with Halloween. Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Halloween, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside. Did not the lowing kine then troop back from the summer pastures in the forests and on the hills to be fed and cared for in the stalls, while the bleak winds whistled among the swaying boughs and the snow drifts deepened in the hollows? and could the good-man and the good-wife deny to the spirits of their dead the welcome which they gave to the cows?
But it is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be hovering unseen on the day "when autumn to winter resigns the pale year." Witches then speed on their errands of mischief, some sweeping through the air on besoms, others galloping along the roads on tabby-cats, which for that evening are turned into coal-black steeds. The fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about. In South Uist and Eriskay there is a saying:
"Halloween will come, will come,
Witchcraft [or divination] will be set agoing,
Fairies will be at full speed,
Running in every pass.
Avoid the road, children, children."
In Cardiganshire on November Eve a bogie sits on every stile. On that night in Ireland all the fairy hills are thrown wide open and tho fairies swarm forth; any man who is bold enough may then peep into tho open green hills and see tho treasures hidden in them.
But while a glamour of mystery and awe has always clung to Halloween in the minds of the Celtic peasantry, the popular celebration of the festival has been at least, in modern times, by no means
of a prevailingly gloomy cast; on the contrary it has been attended by picturesque features and merry pastimes, which rendered it the gayest night of all the year. Among the things which in the Highlands of Scotland contributed to invest the festival with a romantic beauty were the bonfires which used to blaze at frequent intervals on the heights.
In the northern part of Wales it used to be customary for every family to make a great bonfire called Coel Coeth on Halloween. The fire was kindled on the most conspicuous spot near the house; and when it had nearly gone out everyone threw into the ashes a white stone, which he had first marked. Then having said their prayers round the fire, they went to bed. Next morning, as soon as
they were up, they came to search out the stones, and if any one of them was found to be missing, they had a notion that the person who threw it would die before he saw another Halloween.
The equivalent of Halloween bonfires is reported also from France. We are told that in the department of Deux-Sevres, which forms part of the old province of Poitou, young people used to assemble
in the fields on All Saints' Day (the first of November) and kindle great fires of ferns, thorns, leaves, and stubble, at which they roasted chestnuts. They also danced round the fires and indulged in noisy pastimes.
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