Greetings darklings,

I am preparing for Samhain. It creeps closer like an overly curious zombie or tarantula until you find yourself face to face with it. The grey sky is heavy and overcast today, and the rain falls hard, pounding the pavement. I miss my Vitamin D, or in other words, the sunlight. A black crow sits on a branch. Is he as pensive as me today? Does he not mind the rain or does he miss the sun too?  He looks watchful, his head darting about. 

I still have to buy a jug of cider, a pomegranate and I may have to accept that this year I will have no black taper candles. Paraffin is bad for the lungs anyway. Buying the candles is bad for my wallet, but I buy stuff anyway. I bought a bottle of wine to add to the cider. Samhain is a magical and special time of year. 

Samhain is an ancient Gaelic festival that marks the end of summer and the end of the year. It marks the beginning of winter and the Celtic New Year. Samhain means “Summer’s End’ in Old Irish. It is thought to be the modern Irish name for the month of November. 

The ancient Celts believed that boundary between the physical world and the Otherworld grew very thin at this time of year. It was customary to extinguish hearth fires at home and relight them from the communal bonfire’s embers for good fortune. Feasting was also celebrated during this spooky time of year. 

People held bonfires, wore scary costumes and masks to drive off dark spirits crafted from straw or animal pelts and carved root vegetables such as turnips. They went from door to door for food. Samhain was and is an ancient Celtic pagan and witch Sabbath. The Christian calendar honoured the dead through All Saint’s Day or All Hallows on November 1, which was followed by All Souls’ Day on November 2. 

During the 19th century, during and after the Great Famine of the 1840s, Irish emigrants brought their Halloween customs to America. Those tradtiions developed alongside other seasonal celebrations. Pumpkin carving became a common way to celebrate Halloween. 

Samhain marked a significant turning point in the year, the threshold between the old season and the new. Samhain was a time when the veil between the realm of the living and the dead were blurred or blended, for a short time. The days grew shorter and the nights grew longer. People must have gathered around with each other, as a comfort against the darkness and told each other stories. The flames at Tlachtga represented a light against the dark, a comfort to people. Ghosts, faeries and mysterious beings came alive in the stories they told each other. 

The longstanding tradition of pumpkin and/or turnip carving may have deep origins in the legend of Stingy Jack. He tried to trick the devil. He was condemned to wander Ireland with only a tiny flame inside a hollowed out turnip, doomed to wander the earth for an eternity. 

Halloween parties are common in Ireland. One tradition in particular stands out. On the island of Inis Mor, County Galway, the locals are so afraid of dark spirits that they mask their identities and stay silent even in local pubs. They even write down their drink orders. The only sound in the pubs is the ticking of a clock. That demonstrates a deep reverence for the dead, that is certainly not taken as seriously in North America.

They had good reason to fear the night time and dark spirits in the days of the anceint Celts. That fear has endured till modern present day. The dark spirits back then were known as slaugh, the spirits of the unforgiven dead. The slaugh belonged to the Unseelie Court, the Slaugh Sidhe, or ‘Fairy Host’. The spirits of the unforgiven soared through the night skies, searching for humans to ‘pick off’. 

An early report about these formidable spirits dates all the way back to the year 1690. “Highlanders making still a Distinction betwixt Sluagh Saoghalta {Earthly Host} and Slaugh Sith, implying that the Souls goe to the Sith when dislodged.'” 

Later accounts in the 19th century  tell that the Slaugh were believed to be ‘the spirits or mortals who had died’. In other accounts, the Host were armies having battles in the sky. On the Isle of Barra, a man Alexander Carmichael ” was told that the spirits fought great battles in the air and that, ‘their crimson blood may be seen staining rocks and stones.’ ‘Full nan sluagh’, the blood of the hosts is the beautiful red ‘crotal’ of the rocks, melted by frost.'” Beautiful blood? Well that is a new one to get my head around. 

In other stories, the Sluagh were a scourge, not a winged battle army. They could take the form of wind gusts, burn skin and cause boils. Sometimes they say the Host were winged like destructive birds. Sometimes they appeared like a frightening flock of ravens or crows. 

The Slaugh were believed to have flown from the west ‘in the mouth of night,’ wanting to steal souls. When a person was dying, the windows and doors on the west sides of houses were drawn shut. That was to keep nasty spirits out. The most dangerous time for encountering the Sluagh was at Samhain. They believed the gates of hell would open and the Host would ride out, flying through the night sky searching for unwary souls. 

The Sluagh sometimes returned humans to their mortal realms, but it was believed that the people were never the same again. The daughter of the King of France was woken at night and taken away by the Sluagh. She was returned after being carried a long way over land and seas. She died, but first she told her tale of hardship. 

There we have it. A blog post full of scary stories to keep you awake at night, from Stingy Jack to the elusive Sluagh. Have fun on Samhain!

Blessings, Spiderwitch )O(

Credit to: https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/the-sluagh-spirits-of-the-unforgiven-dead/