Encounters between the fairies and their human counterparts are said to be particularly prevalent at Halloween. For on that dark night, like May Eve, the veil between this world and the otherworld is at its thinnest. It is well known that on Halloween the fairies shift location and hold their revels in ancient raths, on top of hills, and around lonesome hawthorn trees. Many people would avoid going out on Halloween as the fairies, who are often mischievous and sometimes vindictive, were believed to be particularly boisterous on this night.

Leaving offerings to the fairies on Halloween was a widespread in Ireland, although the custom was steadily in decline from the middle of the nineteenth century. Despite the decline, the custom is still carried out in some Irish households to this day. Although the idea of sharing the Halloween feast with our fairy counterparts sounds like a friendly gesture, these offerings were often presented in an attempt to put a stop to the fairies more sinister activities. During his childhood in the 1920s Seán O’Callaghan of Ballygrane in County Cork recalled that his mother always left a plate of barmbrack and a saucer of milk at the gate of their house on Halloween night, and that his mother believed that if she failed to leave this offering ‘the fairies would come in and break all the crockery in the house.’ Attempts to appease the fairies on Halloween were not restricted to rural areas; the famous Irish playwright, William Butler Yeats recalled being told as a child that offerings were still made on Halloween night in the slums of Dublin to secure protection against the fairies. Those who dared to venture out on Halloween would often carry charms including items made of iron and crucifixes to repel the fairies, Elizabeth Andrews in her 1913 book Ulster Folklore noted that on Halloween in parts of County Derry mothers put salt or oats on the heads of their children to protect them from being abducted by the fairies.

Many who ventured out on Halloween found themselves unexplainably lost in what were once familiar surroundings. In his 1889 book, originally titled Donegal 60 Years Ago, Hugh Dorian provided the following account of the disorientation that was supposed to accompany those who found themselves lost on Halloween, ‘the passerby can hear the sound of music coming from some steep rock, or if a man in the dusk of the evening is looking for some stray animal he experiences their tricks by going astray and wandering about himself, and then he hears them laughing aloud at him in his difficulty.’ If you find yourself lost on Halloween night, or on any other night for that matter, a good way to find your bearings is to turn your coat inside out; as doing so is supposed to break the fairies’ enchantment. If Halloween was a dangerous time to be abducted by fairy hosts, it was also a date that provided opportunities to rescue loved ones who were held in the fairy realm. Father John O’Hanlon noted in his 1870 book Irish Folk Lore that ‘persons taken away to the raths are often seen at this time by their living friends, and usually accompanying a fairy cavalcade. If you meet the fairies, it is said, on All-Hallows’ Eve, and throw the dust taken from under your feet at them, they will be obliged to surrender any captive human being.’

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The fairies are not always vindictive to their human counterparts, and there are many stories where the fairies seem to need the assistance of mortals as midwives, musicians, and, in some tales, to carryout abductions. While the fairies are thought to be more inclined to harm humans at Samhain, in some tales their intentions can often seem benevolent; although the outcome can still have a negative impact on the human protagonist as can be discovered in the following short County Leitrim tale taken from the 1894 edition of Folklore:

‘On Hallow Eve, as a young fellow was going home, he chanced to pass a fort, and heard the most beautiful music he had ever listened to in his life. As he stopped to listen, a grand castle seemed to appear before him, and he was invited to enter. Inside he found full of little men running about, and one of them came to him and told him on no account to take any refreshment there or it would be the worse for him, he took nothing. By-and-bye he saw them all trooping out. He followed, and noticed that they all dipped their fingers in a large cask outside the entrance door and rubbed their fingers across their faces. He accordingly dipped his finger in the liquid and rubbed it over one of his eyes. In an instant there was a fine horse ready for him, and away with him and the others over the country, and over the whole world.

Towards morning he found himself lying on the butt of an old haystack, about half-a-mile from his own door, and getting up, he made his way home. The next day he had occasion to go into the market town, and whom should he see, but all his friends of the night, mingling with the people of the place, and going up and down through the market. What must he do but up and speak to some of them, and asked them how they did. Said one to him, “How can you see us?” So he told them that he had dipped his finger in the barrel before the castle door and rubbed it over his right eye. That instant as he spoke the little man struck his eye with a stick he had, and took the sight from it, and it was no more he saw either the good people or anything else with that eye.’

I’m going to finish up this post on Halloween & the Fairies in Irish Folklore with the following popular tale of fairy abduction titled ‘The Fairy Bride.

There was a young farmer who did not believe in the fairies, and so did not fear walking alone near areas where the fairies were known to frequent. One dark Halloween evening he was out hunting geese when he saw three dark figures carrying a coffin. Noticing that they were a man short, and out of respect for the dead, the farmer took the fourth corner of the coffin procession advanced in silence, but soon one of the three figures said that it was time to have a rest, and with that they proceeded to lower the coffin onto the road. As the young farmer laid his corner of the coffin down, he lost sight of the other three bearers, and when he looked up again, they were nowhere to be seen.

Confused by the sudden disappearance of the other three bearers the young farmer looked around and waited for their return, but with the passing of time he came to believe that they would not be returning. While waiting the young farmer felt compelled to look inside coffin. To his great surprise he found a young woman dressed in ordinary clothes, rather than habit that the dead were usually buried in at the time. As he stared at this strange sight the woman opened her eyes at put out her arm to the young farmer. Though he was shocked at seeing the animation in the face and the body of the young woman he extended his hand and helped her to her feet. Once she was standing, he asked the young woman how she came to be in the coffin, but she made no reply to any of his questions and only shook her head, at which stage he realised that she was unable to speak. Not knowing what to do with the young woman the young farmer took her back to his home. She took on many of the household chores, and they got on well, but she never spoke a word.

On the following Halloween the young farmer happened to be passing near the very spot where he had first encountered the young woman on the previous year when he heard voices coming from a nearby rath. He soon realised that the voices were complaining about their failure to carry off the young woman the previous Halloween. One of the voices bragged “he was never able to discover how to make her speak,” to which a second voice replied “and there’s not much hope of that! – small chance he’ll ever find the small pin behind her ear.” Upon hearing this method for breaking the fairies’ enchantment the young farmer raced home and took the pin from behind young woman’s ear, and from that moment her power of speech returned. The two of them kept talking and they were married within the year.

Sources

Andrews, Elizabeth. Ulster Folklore. London 1913.

Dorian, Hugh. The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal. Edited by Breandán Mac Suibhne & David Dickson. Dublin, 2000.

Duncan, Leland L. ‘Further Notes from County Leitrim.’ Folklore 5, no. 3 (1894), pp. 177-211.

Gregory, Lady Augusta. Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland. 1920.

Lynd, Robert. Home Life in Ireland. London, 1909.

McGlinchey, Charles. The Last of the Name. Edited by Brian Friel. Belfast, 1986.

O’Callaghan, Seán. Down by the Glenside. Cork and Dublin, 1992.

O’Hanlon, John (Lageniensis). Irish Folk Lore: Traditions and Superstitions of the Country; with Humorous Tales. London, 1870.

Wilde, Lady Jane, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland. London, 1888.

Main painting Dancing Fairies by Richard Doyle, 1824-1883.

In Ireland Hallowe’en has a long tradition as a night for games and escapades. At one time, at least in parts of County Waterford, Hallowe’en was known as oídhche na h-aimléise, ‘The night of mischief or con’, while in some areas of Counties Cork and Kerry Hallowe’en is traditionally referred to as Snap Apple Night – in recognition to the central role played of apples in a number Hallowe’en games that are still played annually on this the last night of October which welcomes the winter. While many of the following traditional games and pranks, documented from nineteenth and twentieth sources in this post, have managed to survive into our own times – others have fallen into disuse over the past century.

Bobbing, Diving, or Ducking for Apples

This is a game that has survived into our own times and remains a favourite pastime with children on Hallowe’en night. In setting up the game a barrel or basin of water is placed on the floor with a number of apples floating on the surface. The contestants hold their hands behind their backs. The game is played by the participants attempting to sink their teeth into one of the apples – a feat which can only be achieved if the apple is pushed to the bottom of the container. In variants of the game coins are added either to the bottom of the barrel or wedged halfway into the apples.

Snap Apple

Snap Apple is another game still widely played in households across Ireland on Hallowe’en night. For this game an apple is suspended, just above the height of the contestants, by tying the apple’s stalk with string to a beam, rafter or some other elevated surface in the house. The contestants stand some distance away and take turns in making a running leap at the apple in an attempt to sink their teeth and take a bite of the apple.

A more boisterous and potentially dangerous variant of Snap apple, which has declined in popularity dramatically over the past century, involves the use of two pieces of wood or sticks with pointed ends tightly fastened together in the shape of an x or cross. A lighted candle and an apple were impaled on alternative ends of the cross. The cross would be suspended from the rafter with a piece of cord which was twisted tight so that it would revolve at a great pace when untangling itself. The object of the game is to get a bite of the apple – but many would end up with a face full of wax as they missed their target.

Riding or shoeing the Wooden Mare

Another game that was a feature of Hallowe’en gatherings was known as ‘Riding or Shoeing the Wooden Mare.’ John Donaldson gives a detailed description of how the game was played in his 1838 work A Historical and Statistical Account of the Barony of Upper Fews in the County of Armagh:

‘It [the wooden mare] is made of a pole, or strong handle of a fork or shovel, about 6 feet long; this is tied at both ends with a rope which is secured in the middle to a joist or beam from which it suspends in a horizontal position about 18 inches from the ground.

The operator mounts and places his limbs like a tailor across the pole and catches it between his thighs with one hand, and has a short stick to balance himself in the other hand. When he has his beast settled (for she is ticklish and uneasy), he hits her a blow with his short stick, which is putting in a nail, and then as soon as possible applies the stick to the ground in order to balance himself, but it often happens, if the stick be not placed near her centre, she wheels round and the operator falls. There are some people, however, who have a knack of keeping her steady and putting in the requisite number of nails.’

Mischief

Making mischief on Hallowe’en night is a long-established tradition in Ireland. Through the veil of darkness all sorts of antics are resorted to by wandering gangs of youths as they travel though the lonely country roads, villages and the towns of Ireland creating havoc with the knowledge that their transgressions could be blamed on the fairies, who are known to be particularly active on Hallowe’en night.

A number of imaginative ruses were noted by Irish folklore collectors over a hundred years ago which included removing gates from hinges, pouring water down the chimneys, and a sophisticated form of the knick knack* prank, which involved tying the knockers of a row or a terrace of houses together so that when one door was opened the knockers of the remaining houses  tap and rattle in unison. Cabbages seem to have played an important role in the revelry that accompanied Hallowe’en; an 1893 article noted that in County Leitrim ‘the lads steal all the cabbages they can, and break them in pieces by throwing them on the roads, which are sometimes found covered with the debris of broken cabbage in the morning.’  While in a 1907 article by Hugh James Byrne described how the youths in Roscommon targeted misers and difficult neighbours for their “practical jokes” which included taking ‘the pith out of a cabbage-stalk and stuff it in with hay, and put in a lighted turf, which makes the hay smoulder, and puff the smoke through the keyhole, filling the house with a disagreeable smell.’

*Ringing a doorbell or knocking on a door and running away.

Sources

Byrne, Hugh James. ‘All Hallows Eve and Other Festivals in Connacht.’ Folklore 18, no. 4 (1907), 437-439.

Dorian, Hugh. The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal. Edited by Breandán Mac Suibhne & David Dickson. Dublin, 2000.

Donaldson, John. A Historical and Statistical Account of the Barony of Upper Fews in the County of Armagh. Dundalk, 1923.

Duncan, Leland L. ‘Folk-Lore Gleamings from County Leitrim.’ Folklore 4, no, 2 (June 1893),  pp. 176-194.

Haddon, A. C. ‘A Batch of Irish Folklore’ Folklore 4, no. 3 (1893), 349-364.

Omorethi. ‘Customs Peculiar to Certain Days, Previously Observed in County Kildare.’ Journal of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society and Surrounding Districts V (1906-1908), 439-454.

O’Sullivan, Maurice. Twenty Years A-Growing.  Translated by Moya Llewelyn Davies and George Thomson. Dublin and London, 1933.

Featured painting at top of post is Snap Apple Night by Daniel Maclise, 1834. Currently in a private collection.

The souls of the dead were believed to be able to walk among the living between Hallowe’en and All Souls Day. When darkness fell great care was taken by the living to honour and extend hospitality to their own departed. To welcome the wandering dead on Hallowe’en, front doors were left open, food was prepared, and seats were set by the fire, which was built to burn through the night. Before the household retired to bed prayers were said and candles lit for the souls of those family members who had passed away. In parts of County Wexford candles served another purpose, and were placed in the windows of houses to assist departed loved ones in finding their past homes.

While released from their suffering the hospitality extended to the dead was, in part, offered out of respect, but also as a precautionary measure, as the dead were supposed to be jealous of the living, and believed to take revenge over past grievances. Many feared to set foot outside on Hallowe’en; as Lady Wilde explained ‘according to the popular belief, it is not safe to be near a churchyard on Hallow Eve, and people should not leave their homes after dark, or the ghosts would pursue them . . . if on that night you hear footsteps following you, beware of looking round; it is the dead who are behind you ; and if you meet their glance, assuredly you must die.’

For the mothers of babies who had died before baptism, even as they sat at home, Hallowe’en presented  a night of great anguish and sorrow, as prayers could not save the souls of their unbaptised offspring who where thought to be the captives of the fairies, and only released on Hallowe’en when the fairies had their own revels. As a Mayo correspondent wrote to the Graphic newspaper in 1881, unbaptised babies ‘come to gaze hopelessly in at the warm kitchen and the mother from whom it was so crudely torn, while it shivers and wails in the cold. Then she will make the sign of the cross and then weep, but dares not offer up a prayer for the doomed soul, which, she believes, must wander hopelessly for eternity.’

Sources

Carbery, Mary. The Farm by Lough Gur: The Story of Mary Fogarty. Dublin, 1937.

McGlinchey, Charles. The Last of the Name. Edited by Brian Friel. Belfast, 1986.

Thiselton Dyer, T. R. (Rev). British Popular Customs Past and Present: Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. London 1900.

Various articles from volumes of the Folklore Journal and the Graphic.

Painting James Walter Gozzard, 1888-1950