The Other World To the New World - A Samhain Tale on the Feast of the Dead - Halloween

A South Jersey Tale of Halloween:

It is said that the power of the Sidhe, as the Fairy Mounds appearing anywhere the ancient tongue has been spoken are called, is unleashed only on one night a year. That night is Samhain. Samhain, the Celtic Feast Day of the Dead, the night known as Halloween.

Furtively, so as not to draw attention, it has always been whispered by the awe struck mortal folk that the awful and sometimes vengeful fanciful beings, the Fairies, who dwell in the Sidhe, pass through the shimmering doorway from the Other World to this world only on Halloween. They say that the Celtic New Year, Samhain the Feast of Dead, allows them one frantic ethereal escape from the Otherworld. For just this one night these the Fairies escape the Sidhe, home of fallen Gods and the restless souls of the dead.

The Gaelic tongue, the language of the ancients, passes its great power to the Fairies of Sidhe. This power has as its source the word and thoughts of the Gael, a power derived from the ancients who created the tongue, a power that hovers as an aura over the place where it is spoken. As the tongue passed into mist with fewer speakers, as an alien speech with its ailien thoughts began to overtake the ancient lands of the Tuatha and corrupt the Gael, the rage of the Sidhe has grown. 

The dwellers of the Sidhe. the Fairies in their many guises, draw their strength from the tongue of the ancients. The  Gaelic tongue gives them their terrible strength and feeds their vengeance. The Fairies cannot survive without the power that the ancient tongue brings to their long-suffering souls.  It is said that the forces of the Other World are unable to escape the confines of the Sidhe unless the Tongue can be heard, or if the memory of the Tongue having been spoken in a place can be detected. Such a place becomes the focus of the Fairies of Sidhe when they cross from the Otherworld, cross from the Sidhe to this world on Samhain, when they cross over from the Otherworld on Halloween.

Before the time of the Blasphemers it was the Druids who protected the people on the Feast Day of the Dead. The Druids built great bonfires that protected the fearful Gael.  The bonfires were lit on sacred hills where the mortal souls would congregate on the Night of the Dead and be protected by the power of the Druidical Fire from the rampage of the Sidhe.

One of the defining moments in my recalling the joys of childhood is Halloween. As I write this I am transported back into time as I recollect the excitement of the evening. We rushed home from school on that magical day at the end of October to prepare our costumes and position ourselves, giddy with anticipation, at the front door awaiting sundown and then we were off on a night of mystery and enchantment.  As darkness fell we began our journey through the dimly lit streets intent on begging treats from the houses that lined the lanes of the village. 

Our beloved grandmother who lived nearby, born in the wilds of Donegal, lived on the route we would take for the night.  Her house was always our first stop.  Her warm big kitchen had for many years been the focal point of her many relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins who had come from the Gaeltacht of Donegal Ireland to the new world.  Not long ago the sound of Gaelic was everywhere in the house, and the comfort of it extended to the next generation though the younger ones were never taught to speak it.  Now that the older family members have passed over the years  the memory of the tongue is slowly dying away in my grandmother’s house, just an aura of a fond remembrance.

On leaving her home on our way to collect the promised treats from neighbor and friends during the evening our Grandmother would grow solemn and she would gravely give us a warning as we went on our way, "Don’t let the Fairies get you". This admonishment would linger in my mind accompanied by a growing sense of apprehension as the night wore on. 

In the autumn chill the trees had begun to shed their leaves creating a yellow, orange and red carpet covering the pavements. As we moved from door to door in the crisp autumn air our feet pushed a path through the multicolored carpet.  The dim outline of the other groups of children would ebb and flow as we moved through the streets, sometimes meeting up at the doorways jostling for position to collect our treats and then going our own ways. 

There was an hour or so when the sidewalks were crowded and the sounds of revelry filled the pathways. But as the night progressed the crowds thinned and the happy sounds became muted and far away.  It was about this time that a somber, almost sinister aspect began to overtake the night.

We walked back home the way we had come at the end of the evening, fatigue overtaking excitement trudging through the carpet of decaying vegetation. One particularly cold evening as we returned home along a wooded path at the edge of the village we approached my Grandmother’s house, a place where many years ago the tongue of the ancients could be heard on the Celtic Feast day, but now lay quiet, the memory of it ebbing away.  Slowly dying.

The house was dark, my grandmother gone to bed, but I saw what appered to be a dull pulsing light visible through the kitchen window. As we passed the house there was a rush of wind, a flash of light and the knife edge of a banshee scream which passed over us in a shimmering veil. In an instant, it was gone. Half imagined, half real, not spoken of. I was with my brother John and my sisters Ellen and Bernadette, we looked at one another without speaking and quickened our pace. 

Soon we were at home sitting at the kitchen table, dividing our spoils into big bowls purposefully brought out from the cupboard. The kitchen steeped in the aroma of stew warming on the stove. Our mother would be bubbling with her own sense of excitement over the many visitors, some known to her, some not. We were back in the light.