A Beginners Guide: The Irish Way🍀🇮🇪

36: Halloween

Yes, we all know it and love it. Well, the majority of Earth loves it. Like usual, us Irish have our traditional Halloween. So heres a few facts and things we do for Halloween. So, Forget St Patrick's Day! Halloween is the original Irish festival and was first celebrated here around 2000 years ago. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer event (Samhain) during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. They would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. Halloween has always been a time filled with mystery, magic and superstition. Although it is less about dead spirits and more about having fun and dressing up, there are some rituals that we have kept going. Here's a list of some ancient, and some more recent, traditions some of which can even forecast your future.

1) Apple games ( The Celts were obsessed with finding out the identity of their future spouses and many games are centred around this including apple snap and bobbing for apples. Btw, no i don't know what Apple Snap is. Apples, which are associated with love and fertility, are suspended from strings and players are blindfolded and their arms tied behind their backs. It is said that whoever gets the first bite will be first to marry or get a prize. When it comes to bobbing, it's also believed that if you put the apple you bite under their pillow the same night, you dream of your future lover. Another way of finding your future spouse is to peel an apple in one go. If done successfully the single apple peel can be dropped on the floor to reveal the initials of the person you're going to marry.)

2) ColCannon ( Top trick or treat fuel has to be colcannon which is a simple but tasty dish made with mashed spuds, curly kale and raw onions. Traditionally coins were wrapped in pieces of clean paper and slipped into children's colcannon for them to find and keep. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it.)

3) Jack O Latern ( Or as we call them, pumpkin lanterns. It is thought that the Celts carried home an ember from the communal bonfire in a hollowed out a turnip so they could walk home with the fire still burning. But another version of its originality dates back to the 18th century. It is named after an Irish blacksmith, called Jack, who was denied entry into Heaven. He was condemned to walk the earth for eternity but asked the devil for some light. He was given a burning coal which burnt into a turnip that he had hollowed out. People believed that hanging a lantern in their front window would keep Jack's wandering soul away. Irish emigrants in America adapted the tradition and used a pumpkin instead as it was more difficult to find turnips over there. Now we're all at the pumpkins.)

4) Barnbrack/ Bairín Breac ( If you want to know your future than you'll have to bake a barnbrack with various objects baked into the fruit loaf, including of course a ring. This is a traditional game and the hidden objects signify different things: A ring means marriage, a coin - wealth, rag - poverty, and a thimble means you'll be an old maid. I used to call it Boring brack)

5) Bonfires ( The Halloween bonfire is a tradition to encourage dreams of who your future husband or wife is going to be. The idea is to drop a cutting of your hair into the burning embers and then you will dream of you future loved one )

6) Beware of the Fairies ( It was once thought that fairies and goblins collected souls as the trawled the earth on Halloween night. The story goes that if you threw dust from under your feet at the fairy they would release any souls they kept captive. But over the years this legend was changed and farm animals would be anointed with holy water to keep them safe through the night. If animals showed any signs of sickness on Halloween they would be spat at to try to ward off the evil spirits. )

7) Blind date ( This is another Irish tradition where you can find out what your destiny might be by using a humble vegetable.
Blindfolded local ladies would go out into the fields and pull up the first cabbage they could find. If their cabbage had a substantial amount of earth attached to the roots then their future loved one would have money. Eating the cabbage would reveal the nature of their future husband - bitter or sweet )

Now heres a secret bonus story! ( anyone getting the Mr. Gum reference?)

This is probably the most well-known ghost story in Ireland - from a childhood pact, to predictions from the dead and ghostly apparitions. This one will stay with you. A manuscript of this story was found in Curraghmore, County Waterford. The story was recorded by Lady Betty Cobbe, the granddaughter of Lady Beresford, sometime in the 1700s. Lord Tyrone and Lady Beresford were born with the names John Le Poer and Nichola Sophia Hamilton. The children were orphans and were raised by an atheist guardian who was determined to convert the children to his atheist views. The children continued to believe in heaven and a never-ending life so they made a pact with each other. They decided that the first of the siblings to die would reappear to the other, thus proving that there was life after death. Nichola eventually married Sir Tristam Bereford, the oldest son of Richard, Earl of Tyrone, and Lady Dorothy Annesley, daughter of Arthur, Earl of Anglesey. One night she woke up to find her foster-brother standing beside her bed. He told her that he had just died, reminding her of their childhood pact. The spirit of her foster-brother then told her of future events. He told her that her husband would die and she would re-marry, that she would have four children and that she would die on the day she turned 47. Terrified and doubting that her vision was real she asked her foster-brother if this was real. He grabbed her wrist causing it to shrink and wither. From that day forth she wore a black silk ribbon to hide the deformity. Everything that her foster-brother had predicted came true except for her death. She did not die on her 47th birthday. On her 48th birthday Lady Beresford decided to celebrate the occasion with some friends. They included a clergyman who was an old family friend. At the party she exclaimed "I am 48 today." The clergy man replied "No, my dear, you are 47." When she questioned how he knew this he said that he had looked at the registry of her birth only days before. She cried "You have signed my death warrant!" She went to her chamber, made out her will and died that night.

Also, as a treat, here's a video that I'm sure will get you thinking. It shows a ghost on CCTV footage in one of Corks oldest secondary school. I for one, believe it to be real.