Did you ever notice how pitch dark in gets in Ireland? It's the perfect setting for a scary Halloween. The Celts were the first to celebrate Halloween to mark the end of the summer and the start of the winter months. Celtic Druids believed that Halloween was the one night when the living and the dead were the closest. They were the first to dress up as witches, goblins and devils to disguise themselves in the event they would encounter real witches, goblins or devils. They feared they would be taken away at the end of the night.
The tradition of carving Jack O'Lanterns can also be traced back to Ireland. Legend has it that during the eighteenth century, an Irish blacksmith, Jack O'Lantern tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree. Once the Devil climbed the tree, Jack placed crosses around the trunk of the tree so that the Devil was unable to get down. The Devil threw a burning coal ember at Jack that he placed inside a turnip that he had gouged out. The Devil condemned Jack to wander the earth for eternity. When the Irish immigrated to America during the famine, they discovered that pumpkins were more plentiful and easier to carve, so they used pumpkins to make their Jack O'Lanterns instead of turnips.
I spent one Halloween in Ireland when I was 8. I can remember being dressed up in my little witch costume and heading over to my grandparents house in Drumlish, Longford. The house was filled with my cousins, who were bobbing for apples, eat some barnbrack cake and feasting on all the sweets we collected trick or treating.
Barnbrack cake never made it out to America, probably because it tasts...well almost as bad as Irish fruitcake! :) Barnbrack is like Irish fortune cookie cake. What makes it so special is that the cake is baked with a number of trinkets that represents different things. The trinkets include a ring, which predicts love or marriage, a coin, which predicts wealth and a piece of a rag for misfortune. The cake is sliced up and passed out and eaten very carefully! HA!
What would Halloween be like without some scary ghost stories? My Grandfather would hold court by the fire as he puffed away on his woodbine cigarettes. He was an incredible storyteller and loved to scare the be-jesus out of us! I can remember one story that he told about this fella who rode his bicycle past the graveyard on Halloween night and was never seen again. The man's bicycle was found leaning up against the graveyard fence. Then came the dare! Who would be brave enough to walk up the dark lane to the main road? "Go on...ya 'ol coward ya," my Mom would tease! No way!!!!
So Happy Halloween to you. Have fun carving those Jack O'Lanterns and beware of all the little ghosts and goblins! If you're looking for a good Halloween song to listen to while you carve your pumpkins, download Richard Shindell, "Are You Happy Now."
Cheers-Kathleen
