Happy Halloween - Blessed Samhain

Happy Halloween! 

And a very blessed Samhain to my various pagan and witchy chums.

This evening my road will be awash with ghouls, ghosts, mummies, vampires, zombies and strangely indefinable characters with wings and bad make-up. But  I wonder how many of the little darlings roaming the streets and scrumping for sweets tonight realise just what it's all about? 

The festival of All Saints/All Hallows falls on November the 1st and is followed by All Souls Day on November the 2nd. It's a special celebration of thanks to all the Christian martyrs who died for the good of Mankind. In Mexico, these two days combine to form a Catholic festival called The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos, Día de los Difuntos or, simply, Día de Muertos) and it celebrates the memory of deceased ancestors. Despite sounding morbidly depressing, it is a day of great fun with much dressing up, live music, street theatre and parades. 

Meanwhile back in the rather more staid UK, All Saints Day is a more formal affair with all of the fun and frolics going on during the night before. Halloween - the name is a contraction of All Hallows Evening - is the evening and night of 31st October - the day before All Saints. And it's traditionally a Pagan day of celebration. 

Which makes it all the stranger that Christian conservative America goes for Halloween in such a big way. Do they not understand what they're celebrating?

Image: Toni Cuenca on Pexels

October 31st is Samhain (pronounced sah-wen), one of the Celtic ‘quarter days’ and the start of the Pagan New Year when it is believed that the souls of the dead roam abroad. It's the time of the year when the barriers between the worlds of the living and the dead are at their thinnest and some spirits will pass through. Some of these could be looking to get up to no good. And so, in past times, various charms were needed to ward them off. 

The doorways and windows of buildings were felt to be particularly vulnerable. If you want to stop ghosts from getting into the house, bury animal bones or a picture of an animal near the front door. Elsewhere, on churches and castles, it was commonplace to site gargoyles or grotesque faces and figures like Sheela Na Gigs and Hunky Punks. It was believed that these would scare away malevolent spirits. Similarly, the scary faces carved into pumpkin lanterns (and earlier on 'punkies' - turnips, swedes and mangolds - see here) are also designed to frighten them away. Strangely though, the lanterns have now become a symbol of evil themselves, regularly appearing on horror movie posters. 

It was also wise to leave gifts of food and drink for supernatural visitors which is, of course, one of the reasons why we now have Trick or Treat.

Image: Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels

People created various charms to keep themselves safe. These included walking around your home three times backwards and anti-clockwise before sunset on Halloween, knocking loudly on wood before Midnight, ringing bells and using mirrors to scare away the influence of the Evil Eye. Traditional English Mummers or Plough Jags, often decorated their costumes with mirrors and other shiny items before commencing their Halloween plays. Mirrors on hats were a favourite - though all I can see in my head now are images of facially-challenged fashion dyslexic Noddy Holder in his top hat on Top of the Pops. With a voice like that, he could scare demons and hobgoblins away, I’m sure. 

Meanwhile, if you hear footsteps behind you, don’t turn around as it may be the dead following you! And if you do look back you could soon be dead yourself ... 

And look out for other signs too ... if a candle flame suddenly turns blue; that means there's a ghost nearby (although if the weather is cold enough, flames will turn blue or violet anyway). If a bat flies into your house, there are ghosts about, but if one flies three times round your house … cancel that holiday booking next year. You won’t be going. 

Spiders are said to house the spirits of dead loved ones, so clear them out of your bedroom unless you want your dead Auntie watching you tonight.

Image: Anthony on Pexels

Halloween is a good night for divining too if you're a believer. The party game of Bobbing for Apples was originally a way of telling the future. Each player cut a chunk out of their apple and then inserted a fortune written on a small piece of paper. The apples were then chucked into a large tub of water and people took turns to retrieve an apple, using just their teeth. Thus every person had their fortune told. As a bonus, you should then peel your apple. The person with the longest unbroken length of peel is assured a long life. Finally, if single, you should throw the apple peel over your shoulder (the right shoulder I presume as the demons are hiding on the left). Anyway, the shape of the letter the peel makes on landing is the initial of your future mate. 

Good news for Susans. Bad news for Kevins. 

Apples are customarily a part of the ‘Dumb Supper’, a silent Feast of the Dead given on Samhain Eve. Participants set a place, with broken crockery, at the head of the dining table for the ancestors, and not a word is spoken during the meal. After the feast is over, the leftover food and broken crockery is ceremonially taken outside, into the woods, for the spirits to consume. This is a powerful ceremony of communion with the dead. Any apples on the tree unharvested after Samhain are left for the spirits.

Image: Chris F on Pexels

The old Celtic custom of lighting big Samhain bonfires (a tradition that has drifted forward to November 5th in the UK) enabled further fortune telling. Once the Halloween fire had died down, the hot ashes could be pushed out from the centre to form a circle around the fire. Within the circle of ashes and at its edge, each person would then lay a pebble. If, next day, any pebble had moved or was damaged in any way, the owner would die within twelve months. 

Now then, all you single ladies – forget Internet sites and dating apps. Here are a few handy Halloween tips for finding the perfect partner: Carry a lamp to a natural water source – such as spring or river – and you should be able to see your future loved one in the reflections in the water. And if you want to see your future children too, take a broken egg with you and chuck it in.

Image: Mike Navolta on Pexels

Alternatively, go out into the middle of a field and scatter hemp seeds. While you’re at it, say: 'Hemp seed I sow thee! Come after me and show me!' You should then be able to turn around and catch a glimpse of your Prince/Princess Charming. Or you might instead indulge in the much lazier practice of sticking a snail in a tin and seeing what initial it draws in slime by morning. But if even that is too much effort, stick a sprig of rosemary and a silver sixpence under your pillow on Halloween and you’ll see your future love in a dream. 

Not wanting to leave the ladies out who already have a partner, you’ll be pleased to know that you can check how faithful they are without recourse to webcams or private detectives. Simply select a letter they wrote to you – the more passionate the better – and lay it open on a table. Fold it nine times, pin the folds together, place the letter in your left-hand glove, and slip it under your pillow. If that night you dream about silver, gems, glass, castles or clear water, your bloke is faithful. If you dream of linen, storms, fire, wood, flowers, or your partner is saluting you, they're up to no good with someone. 

Or just check their phone.

Of course, with the Christian church absorbing Samhain into their calendar, the idea was quickly put about that Halloween was all to do with Devil worship and that the witches' sabbath was a bad thing - hence all the scary imagery. But it was actually no such thing.

I was delighted to be invited to a Samhain celebration a few nights ago (that's our altar above). There's an informal group that meets locally eight times a year to mark the witches' Sabbats and the members represent a range of beliefs - some are Wiccans, some follow other paths, but they're all Pagans. We discussed Samhain traditions and how they have fed into modern Halloween. And we lit candles to honour the beloved dead. It was a lovely, contemplative event and a far cry from what Halloween has become.

But have a Happy Halloween, funsters!

And a blessed Samhain to those who view this day rather more seriously.

Mistletoe and Kissing Balls (snigger)

My favourite fact about Mistletoe is that the name derives from the old English tān, meaning ‘twig’ and the Germanic base mix, which means ‘dung’. So it literally means 'shitty twig’. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests this may be because ‘the plant is propagated in the excrement of birds’. 

Almost everyone associates Mistletoe (Viscum album) with Christmas and cheeky kisses. However, that's a fairly modern tradition and only came about when the Christian church absorbed many pre-existing traditions and practices. Our relationship with the plant goes back much, much further ...

It was a hugely important plant, associated with fertility and healing by the Celts, the Norse peoples and the Anglo Saxons. Because Mistletoe grows on tree branches without being connected to the earth, the belief was that the plant was magical and sustained by the Gods. Any tree that hosted the plant was held as sacred. 

If the ancients found it growing on an oak, their most revered and holy tree, it was seen as being of particular significance. The belief was that the plant would absorb the host tree’s essence, which is sort of accurate, as Mistletoe is actually a parasite. 

In this situation, Mistletoe was harvested in accordance with strict ceremony. The event took place on the sixth night of the new moon after the Winter Solstice and the plant was treated with incredible reverence and care. The Mistletoe was cut using a golden sickle and a cloth was held below the tree by other members of the order to catch it - the plant was never allowed to touch the ground. The Druid would then divide the branches into many sprigs and distribute them to the people who hung them over doorways as protection against thunder, lightning and other evils. It was considered to be so magical that valuable livestock were sacrificed to the sun god, to thank him for the gift - although slaughter was common around this time to ensure meat for the Winter and because feeding livestock in the colder months was expensive. 

For centuries it was known as 'All-Heal' because its leaves and berries were used not only to provide protection from evil, but to strengthen the body against poisons and 'ill humours'. This is somewhat odd as the berries are poisonous to humans. However, birds find them very tasty - especially the Mistle Thrush, which takes its name from this very reason. The berries are quite sticky and adhere to their beaks. Therefore, when they try to get them off by rubbing against trees branches, the seed is spread and a new host is found. 

 

Mistletoe is mostly found on apple trees but it will grow on many other species. I spotted these clusters recently in nearby High Wycombe (I was a passenger in a car at the time).

And, while out walking last month, I found a fairly established Mistletoe growing off a wild Dog Rose. Most of the berries were still green at the time but I revisited the site a few days ago and all of the berries are now white. 

 

Decorating the house with evergreens like Holly (see here), Ivy (here) and Mistletoe is a Winter tradition of long-standing. Some of the plants have a significance of their own (such as the mistletoe being associated with love), but overall, evergreen plants were thought to bring good luck as they remain green through the cold months, carrying the spirit of Spring and Summer. It is interesting to note that Mistletoe was excluded from church decorations, probably due to its pagan and magical associations. This ancient ban on mistletoe is still widely observed even today. 

And yet, Mistletoe was seen as a plant of peace and love. There are all sorts of theories about why we kiss under the Mistletoe but one is that, if enemies met by chance under a tree with Mistletoe on it, they would lay down their arms and maintain a truce until the next day. A second theory links the practice to Anglo-Saxon legend and to Freya, goddess of love, beauty and fertility. If a couple in love exchanged a kiss under the Mistletoe, it was interpreted as a promise to marry, as well as a prediction of happiness and long life. 

By Tudor times, there was a  tradition of hanging a 'Kissing Bough' - a sphere made from various types of evergreen including Mistletoe - over the doorway to greet guests. But then the Victorians took things up a level with their 'Kissing Balls', many of which were incredibly elaborate. And the parties they held under them were often a bit saucy. Both the gentry and paupers alike used the tradition to go a little further than an innocent kiss and 'gambols' were commonplace.

And so were Summer children.

As a footnote I have to include a few images I stumbled across online for Christmas-themed novelty goods. Do people really not know the difference between Mistletoe and Holly?

I strongly suspect that some of these items are made in the Far East where they're still getting the hang of the Western Christmas tradition. As you probably know, for some unknown reason, Christmas Day for the Japanese means eating out at a KFC. Do they think that Colonel Sanders is Santa? 

And there is a story - most likely urban myth - that at the turn of the Millennium, a Japanese retail outlet had a window display depicting Santa nailed to a cross.

Ah, the dangers of trying to assimilate the traditions and beliefs of other cultures without fully understanding them ...

 

Glastonbury Dragons Wild Hunt Ceremony

It looks like they had glorious fun in Glastonbury last night celebrating Samhain with their Dragons' Wild Hunt Ceremony. 

Traditionally, this time of year is all about preparing for Winter and also remembereing those that have passed - the beloved dead. The Wild Hunt Ceremony sees two dragons - red and white - that symbolise Summer and Winter parade through the streets before engaging in mock battle. It also sees the appearance of the Winter King and the legendary Welsh hero Gwyn Ap Neath, King of the Faeries and Lord of Hell, as he rides the land of Avalon. He is strongly associated with Glastonbury Tor and so the event finishes there. 

I love the pageantry and costumes - people go the extra mile for these important community events. 

All photos: Matt Cardy/Getty Images (2017 event) 

I also love the fact that the Glastonbury Border Morris go a bit Goth for the event. And nice too to see a mixed side of male and female dancers. It really should not be the sole preserve of beardy old men. Morris needs young blood to survive and, in Glastonbury at least, the tradition looks safe for a few years yet.

For more info see here.

Getting Tiddly in Cambridge

Tiddlywinks.

Probably the most British game ever.

And today marks an important date in the Tiddlywinks Calendar. This evening it's the National ETwA (English Tiddlywinks Association) Congress in Cambridge. And that's followed by a series of tournaments with competitors hoping the get their hands on the Silver Wink. 

Tiddlywinks began as a Victorian parlour game and bank clerk Joseph Assheton Fincher (1863–1900) is credited with its invention. Or, at least, he was the first to file a patent application for the game in 1888 and applied for the trademark Tiddledy-Winks in 1889. However, competition was quite fierce and several other games manufacturers came out with their own versions of the game with names such as Spoof, Flipperty Flop, Jumpkins, Golfette, Maro, Flutter, and many others.

But the name Tiddlywinks won - with a slightly variant spelling - and it became a hugely popular craze, played by adults and children alike. Sadly, however, it soon became more associated with children and adult interest in the game waned as we moved into the 20th century.

As you're doubtless aware, the game is played by pushing the edge of a large disc - a Squidger - down onto the edge of a smaller disc - the Wink - which causes the Wink to jump. The aim is to get your Winks into a Cup. The full rules of the game are surprisingly complicated and you can read all about them here. 

The birth of the modern game can be traced to 1955 and a group of Cambridge University undergraduates from Christ's College. Their aim was to devise a sport at which they could represent the university. They had already been informally playing other universities since 1946 but it wasn't long before Cambridge's main rival formed the University of Oxford Tiddlywinks Society. 

In 1957, an article appeared in The Spectator entitled 'Does Prince Philip cheat at tiddlywinks?' Sensing a good publicity opportunity the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (CUTwC) challenged Prince Philip (later to become Chancellor of the University in 1976) to a tiddlywinks match to defend his honour. The Duke of Edinburgh appointed The Goons as his Royal champions and presented a trophy, the Silver Wink, for the British Universities Championship. The Silver Wink is still awarded to this day.

Then, in 1958, the English Tiddlywinks Association (ETwA) was founded with the Reverend Edgar 'Eggs' Ambrose Willis as its first Secretary-General.

Tiddlywinks by William Somerville Shanks 

It's claimed that the name 'Tiddlywinks' derives from British slang for an unlicensed public house - a 'Tiddly-wink' (Tiddly was slang for an alcoholic drink or to describe someone who is drunk). However,  the original name was Tiddledy-Winks, which smacks more of simply nonsense language like namby-pamby or diddly-squat. Another theory is that it's onomatopoeic and represents the sound of the Wink rattling as it lands in the Cup.  

Meanwhile there's a whole lexicon of jargon to learn including:

Blitz: an attempt to pot all six winks of a given player's colour early in the game. 

Bomb: to send a wink at a pile, usually from distance, in the hope of significantly disturbing it.

Boondock: to free a squopped wink by sending it a long way away, leaving the squopping wink free in the battle area. 

Bristol: a shot which moves a pile of two or more winks as a single unit; the shot is played by holding the squidger at a right angle to its normal plane. 

Penhaligon: potting a wink from the baseline (i.e., from 3 feet away). 

Cracker: a simultaneous knock-off and squop, i.e. a shot which knocks one wink off the top of another while simultaneously squopping it. 

Crud: a forceful shot whose purpose is to destroy a pile completely. 

Good shot: named after John Good. The shot consists of playing a flat wink (one not involved in a pile) through a nearby pile with the intent of destroying the pile. 

Gromp: an attempt to jump a pile onto another wink (usually with the squidger held in a conventional rather than a Bristol fashion). 

John Lennon memorial shot: a simultaneous boondock and squop. 

Lunch: to pot a squopped wink (usually belonging to an opponent). 

Scrunge: to bounce out of the pot. 

Squidger: the disc used to shoot a wink. 

Squop: to play a wink so that it comes to rest above another wink.

Tiddlies: points calculated when determining the finishing placement of winkers in a tiddlywinks game.

 

If you'd like to know more, visit the ETwA website here.

And enjoy your winking.

Evolution of the Spokey Dokey

As I was out walking yesterday I suddenly heard a weird sound behind me. It was like a low-powered moped approaching. But I was in a field. Then the sound was joined by another similar sound. And another. I turned around to see three young lads on mountain bikes pedalling furiously towards me. 

And the noise? 

It was created by a trio of empty 2 litre soft drinks bottles. Each of the lads had squashed a bottle almost flat and then mounted it behind and below the saddle with the neck of the plastic bottle resting on the rear tyre. The faster they pedalled, the greater the friction between tyre and bottle and - due to the semi-flattened bottle acting as a sound chamber - the greater the noise. 

I was very impressed with their inventiveness as I watched them race past and my mind flashed back to my own wondrous purple chopper (careful now ...).  Yes, the Raleigh Chopper was the cool bike to have if you were a barely pubescent teenager in 1974 and I rode mine around Penzance like I was the King of Cornwall. 

Or I would have if I'd had one. 

The purple Chopper was my fantasy bike but I never got to own one of those gleaming chrome dream machines. So I had to pimp the rather more mundane bike that I had. And in those days that meant spokey dokeys (those weird bead things that clipped to your wheel spokes and made a strange chattering, tinkling sound as you rode along - of course, us boys had to pick all of the pink ones out and throw them away), rubber streamers that plugged into the grips of your handlebars, and stickers taken from magazines. To top it all, it was de rigeuer to use a couple of old clothes pegs to hold a brace of playing cards to the bicycle frame in such a way that they caught the spokes as the wheels turned, creating a sound almost but not completely unlike that of a motorbike. 

This new trick with the plastic bottles is obviously the modern equivalent - the evolutionary offspring of the spokey dokey and card and peg assembly. 

Some things never go out of fashion - they just get upgraded.

A floating microworld

A tiny little floating fungal world.

Photoshop my hand away and add an exciting sky and some weird rock formations and you'd have a Roger Dean album cover.

The Woods have Ears

I spotted a few of these today. They're Wood ears. Or Jelly ears.

Auricularia auricula-Judae is one of our stranger and more bizarre British fungi. They're reddish-brown, weirdly gelatinous and floppy, they grow on wood - especially elder - and have a noticeably ear-like shape. When I was a child, everyone called them Jew's ears but this was not any kind of racist epithet. The name is a corruption of 'Judas's ears' because of the belief that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an elder tree. As far back as the 17th century, Thomas Browne wrote of the species: 

'In Jews' ears something is conceived extraordinary from the name, which is in propriety but fungus sambucinus, or an excrescence about the roots of elder, and concerneth not the nation of the Jews, but Judas Iscariot, upon a conceit he hanged on this tree; and is become a famous medicine in quinsies, sore throats, and strangulations, ever since.' 

In these more culturally sensitive days, we've adopted the Chinese name of Wood Ears, or sometimes Jelly Ears. 

As Browne wrote, it was used a lot in folk medicine as a poultice to treat inflammations of the eye. And the 16th-century herbalist John Gerard, writing in 1597, recommended boiling the fungus in milk, or else leaving them steeped in beer, which would then be sipped slowly in order to cure a sore throat (quinsy).

Surprisingly, they are edible but only after being thoroughly cooked. I did try them once and, frankly, it wasn't worth the effort. The taste is bland and the texture isn't pleasant. They are best used in soups and for making stocks by dehydrating and grinding to a powder. A related species from Asia is used in some Chinese dishes. 

They're welcome to it. 

There are tastier mushrooms out there.

Punkie Night

Today is the last Thursday of the month and that means it's time for Punkie Night in Hinton St George, Somerset.

The tradition goes back over 100 years, when it is said that the men from Hinton travelled to the fair at the nearby village of Chiselborough. When they didn’t return as promised, the women of the village went looking for their husbands with mangold lanterns (a mangold, or mangelwurzel, is a crop grown by farmers for cattle feed – a cross between a turnip and a pumpkin). The women pulled these up from the fields, carved them out and put candles in them to shed light, and then walked the four miles to Chiselborough, in search of their drunken husbands. Some claim that the different designs people carved allowed them to be identified in the dark.

To commemorate the event local children still hollow out their mangolds, carving designs or faces onto the outside. The makers of the best lanterns - by male and female - become the Punkie King and Queen. Then, in the evening, candles are lit and the 'punkies' are paraded through the village while singing:

It's Punkie Night tonight.

It's Punkie Night tonight.

Adam and Eve would not believe

It's Punkie Night tonight.

Give me a candle, give me a light.

If you don't you'll get a fright!

'Punkie' is an old English name for a lantern - probably derived from 'pumpkin' or 'punk', a dialect word meaning tinder. In earlier times, farmers would put a traditional punkie on their gates to ward off evil. spirits at this time of year.

The Punkie Night Facebook Group is here.

Another lunchtime fungus foray

Some splendid fungal sightings yesterday on my lunchtime walk.

Several people have commented on just how many there are this year - particularly saprophytic fungi. These are species that live on rotting logs, leaves and other vegetation and they are turning up in odd places, such as the middle of fields. However, as one expert noted, the exceptional summer drought killed off a lot of plants and there's a wealth of dead roots below the surface that has given the fungi an abundance of food this autumn.

I've certainly not seen quite such a variety for many years. And some species are producing unusually large fruiting bodies too. It's made the mushroom spotting great fun.