Happy Halloween! 🎃 👻 & Blessed Samhain! 🔥

We've lived in our house for something like a quarter century. In that time, we've not had a single child ring the bell and say "Trick or Treat!" Will tonight be the first? Perhaps not, since last Friday, several local community Main Streets held Trick or Treat events. That may, or may not, help explain a dearth of urchins ringing bells over the years. Another contributor may be the distances between houses in rural areas like ours, and the long driveways between the road and the doorbell in many places. Never mind the spirits from the other worlds wandering about.

ghouls? goblins? ghosts" witches?

Photo by J. Harrington

Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are a period when many remember those relatives and friends who have passed on, crossed over, are no longer with us. I remember the phrase from more than one wake I attended, or eulogy I heard as a youth: "He (or She) was too good for this world." It was usually spoken by one of my relatives "of Irish descent," those of a second, third, or fourth generation rather than an original emigrant from "the old country."

"Many people lit bonfires to keep the evil spirits at bay."

Photo by J. Harrington

After living the better half of my life in the Midwest, far from my place of origin, I find I'm getting more and more interested in learning about the prior place of origin of many of my ancestors who came from Celtic stock. They might have remembered these days as the time to celebrate Samhain, which marks the beginning of the darker half of the year. (Until recently, I've always though of the year as being comprised of four seasons rather than two half.) I suspect living in a rural area, closer to and more aware of nature throughout the year, watching sun rise through the East windows and sun set through the West, has lead to the growth of my interest in trees, Druidry and respect for the powers of nature. In fact, as we experience, more and more, the effects of the climate we have broken, I wonder if more and more "modern people" will find themselves drawn to Druidry and paganism. Have you read Richard Powers' The Overstory?

St. Swithin's Chair

ST. SWITHIN'S CHAIR.


ON Hallowmas Eve, ere ye boune ye to rest,
Ever beware that your couch be bless'd;
Sign it with cross, and sain it with bead,
Sing the Ave, and say the Creed.

For on Hallowmas Eve the Night-Hag will ride,
And all her nine-fold sweeping on by her side,
Whether the wind sing lowly or loud,
Sailing through moonshine, or swathed in the cloud.

The Lady she sat in St. Swithin's Chair,
The dew of the night had damp'd her hair ;
Her cheek was pale....but resolved and high
Was the word of her lip and the glance of her eye-
She muttered the spell of St. Swithin bold,
When his naked foot traced the midnight wold,
When he stopt the Hag as she rode the night,
And bade her descend, and her promise plight.

He that dare sit on St. Swithin's Chair,
When the Night-Hag wings the troubled air,
Questions three, when he speaks the spell,
He may ask, and she must tell.

The Baron has been with King Robert his liege,
These three long years, in battle and siege ;
News there are none of his weal or his wo,
And fain the Lady his fate would know.

She shudders and stops as the charm she speaks
Is it the moody owl that shrieks ?
Or is it that sound, between laughter and scream,
The voice of the Demon who haunts the stream ?

The moan of the wind sunk silent and low,
And the roaring torrent has ceased to flow;
The calm was more dreadful than raging storm,
When the cold grey mist brought the ghastly form ! 

From "Waverly Poetry: being the poems scattered through the Waverly novels" by Sir Walter Scott.
Happy Halloween!

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