Samhain - the assembly at the head of winter

"The Feis of Tara every third year, For the fulfilment of laws and rules"

SAMHAIN, or Calan Gaeaf, is held on November Eve and it heralds in the winter half of the Celtic year.

Samhain marks the winter season of Geimhreadh, known in Old Irish as Gaimred, Old Welsh as Gaem, and anciently in Gaul, Giammon, the seventh month of the calendar showing that the start of winter was mid-way through the Celtic calendar year. P.W. Joyce in his A Social History of Ancient Ireland (1903) tells us, "Samain, Samuin, or Samhuin [sowin], the first of November, was the first day of Gemred or Winter. The name is compounded of the two words, sam, which was an old word for Samrad or Summer, and fuin, an ancient word for end: that is to say, the end of Summer: for, the old authority [Cormack's Glossary] adds, 'the whole year was [originally] divided into two parts - Summer from Ist May to Ist November, and Winter from Ist November to Ist May.' The term gemred for winter is a derivative from the older and simpler word geim, meaning the same thing". Emer explains to Cú Chulaind that Samhain is the time when 'summer goes to rest', invoking the word sámhach, meaning 'quiet' or 'still'. Whitely Stokes (1868) explained the origin of the name Samhain as being derived from the word for an assembly, from samhuil, for at this time would be held assemblies for the gathering of taxes and settling claims at the end of the productive time of the year:

"The Feis of Tara every third year,
For the fulfilment of laws and rules,
Was convened at that time mightily
By the noble kings of Erin.

Three days before Samhain, according to custom,
Three days thereafter, good the practice,
Did that high-spirited company
Pass in constant feasting, a week."

- Quoted from an attribution to Eochaidh Eolach; the full poem is given in Winter in the Grove.

Samhain carries hope for the future and the safety of all over the cold and harsh times ahead, and is founded on the hard work and toil of the preceding summer. It is marked by ritual with the hearth fires cleaned and rekindled, and society protected by laws to ensure the good management of animal stock - cattle are brought in from pasturing for over-wintering in pens; managing their numbers and ensuring a winter food supply meant a pre-winter slaughter. And it is a time where the safety of indoors is embraced as recorded in the 16th Century in the Fennian tale 'Tóraigheacht an Ghiolla Dheacair' (6): "During the second half of the year, namely from Samhain to Bealtaine, they lived in the mansions and hostels of Erin such that there was not a lord or innkeeper in the whole country that had not nine of the Fena quartered on him during the winter half of the year."

The month of November, now called Samhain in Ireland, is called Gam(ain) in Cormack's Glossary 673: 'Gam quasi gamos isin greic, nouimber' 'Gam, as though in Greek 'Gamos', November' (Sanas Cormaic in Early Irish Glossaries database and being placed at the head of winter, gaimred, this relates to the month Giamon. The Feis of Tara, an assembly held at Tara, was held 'every third year, for the fulfilment of laws and rules, three days before Samhain and three days thereafter, the high-spirited company pass in constant feasting, a week.' In the Life of Patrick we find that the Feast of Tara was held in May, supporting the view that 'samain' was originally a summer feast that came to be associated with the All Martyrs feast of May 13th that was moved to November as All Saints throughout the Church in AD831 (see below).

Just as November was called Gamain in Ireland, the start of the Celtic winter is marked on the ancient Celtic calendar by Giamon the month that opens Geimhreadh, and thus the feast of Samhain is the Celtic mid-year festival, with Beltaine marking the start of the year six months earlier in Samon at the head of Samhradh (see Samhain is not the Celtic New Year for how Sir John Rhys in 1886 originated the idea that Samhain was the new year festival).

Marking the start of Geimhreadh, the cold winter, Samhain is strongly associated with the dead and the Celtic otherworld of the Sidhe and Annwn (2), for it heralds the coming of cold and dark days. Great fires were lit and the embers were used to kindle the winter hearth fires (3) to ensure warmth indoors over the coming season of cold. The feast of Samhain is also strongly associated with prophecy, a welcome assurance of survival into the following summer and a firm foundation for the plans of kings over the following year, made famous by King Dathi in the Irish tale Sluaghid Dathi.

It is often claimed also that Halloween was the result of Samhain being taken up by Christianity, similarly to the way Belatine was usurped by Easter. However, the Christian festivals honouring the dead were adopted from Roman customs. A major shift in Rome was transformation to the Christian God: the ancient protector of Rome, Jupiter Optimus Maximus was after Constantine changed to God: Deum Optimum Maximum. The ancient festival of Lemuria held in Rome was on May 13th. The purpose was to propitiate lemures, the shades or spirits of the violently dead. The ritual on that day was to feed these spirits black beans, which were hurriedly thrown whilst not looking and returning quickly indoors for safety. Lemures are mentioned by Horace (65BC-8BC), a prominent poet of the reign of Augustus, in his Epistles.

By the 4th century, May 13th become adopted within the Church as a day to remember martyrs and saints. In AD609, May 13th was dedicated to All Martyrs by Pope Boniface IV at a ceremony performed during the restoration and rededication of the Pantheon in Rome which took place between AD608-15. In the following year, AD610, on this date the temple was dedicated to Mother of God and all Holy Martyrs.

Between AD731-741 was the papacy of Gregory III. In this period, a new chapel was built at the Basilica of St Peter and it was dedicated on November 1st to All Saints (as distinct to the Pantheon's May 13th dedication to Martyrs). He fixed the date of the feast of All Saints to November 1st, the anniversary of the dedication - and this is the genuine reason Halloween falls on the eve of November 1st.

In AD831, Pope Gregory IV (827-84) extended the feast of All Saints on November 1st across the entire Church.

In AD2003, Pope John Paul II affirmed the meaning of All Saints Day as follows - "We celebrate today the solemnity of All Saints. This invites us to turn our gaze to the immense multitude who have already reached the blessed land, and points us on the path that will lead us to that destination".

In Ireland, Samhain was separate for over four hundred years of Christianity. Beltaine was immediately usurped by the Paschal feast (in AD433), but All Saints was celebrated in May until AD831. During those four centuries, the importance of druidic festivals would have diminished into folk custom, and they would have been suitably ready to embrace the eve of All Saints.

The otherworldly attributes of Samhain during the period of rapidly shortening daylight hours are exemplified by traditions of removing the coverstones of the entrances of the megalithic monumental structures (1). The most famous Sidhe mound is that of 'New Grange' at the Bruig na Bóinde complex on the Boyne. At the winter solstice in December, a shaft of light is able to enter into the central chamber of this ancient and pre-Celtic structure. The legacy of the very ancient past continued in the legends and myths of the Sidhe-folk and how they interacted with and sometimes came to be a part of the Celtic deities.

The festival of Samhain is a great fire feast and at the turn of the twentieth century, there was much interest in things Celtic. Charles Squire in his Celtic Myth & Legend Poetry & Romance published in 1905 (4) describes Samhain thus: 'Sacrifices were made at "Hallowe'en", which took the place, in the Christian calendar, of the heathen Samhain - "Summer's End"- when the sun's power waned, and the strengths of the gods of darkness, winter, and the Underworld grew great'. He describes it as occurring on the autumn equinox.

In 1967, Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick in their The Celtic Realms (5) describe the Celtic year being divided into two halves 'by the feasts of Beltine or Cetsamain (May 1) and Samain (November 1)... The second feast, Samain, was the greatest feast of the year, probably a harvest festival. The word means 'end of summer', but this is not certain'. Dr Stokes, in publishing Cormac's Glossary, takes samain from the root som, same (English same, whence English assemble - thus samhuil), and makes *samani- mean 'assembly', referring to the gathering at Tara on 1st November.

Dillon and Chadwick further describe an example of Samhain in Irish literature, with 'One of the most fascinating of the stories of the Underworld is another Connact tale, Echtra Nerai ('The Adventure of Nera'). Here the Underworld is entered through a 'cave' (uaim) in the rock near the court of Ailill and Medb at Cruachain in Connacht. As the court are celebrating the feast of Samain, Nera goes outside and cuts down a corpse from the gallows who complains of thirst, and after giving him a drink Nera replaces him on the gallows. On returning to the court he finds that the síd-hosts have come and burnt it, and left a heap of heads of his people cut off - in fact a typical piece of Celtic raiding.

The adventure continues with Nera pursuing the procession of síde to the Underworld. 'Then in a vision his wife warns him that at the next Samain the síde will again destroy the court unless he goes and warns the king. He takes wild garlic and primrose and fern to prove that he comes from the Underworld, and he goes to the court of Ailill and Medb and warns them. They destroy the síde, but Nera was left 'inside and has not come out until now, nor will he come till Doom'. From the time that he joined the procession of the síde and entered the Underworld he had become one of the dead.'

The Book of Ballymote (7) tells us of the arrangements for the feast, where King Cormac advises his grandson, Cairbré, "A prince on Saman's Day should light his lamps, and welcome his guests with clapping of hands, procure comfortable seats, the cupbearers should be respectable and active in the distribution of meat and drink. Let there be moderation of music, short stories, a welcoming countenance, a welcome for the learned, pleasant conversations, and the like; these are the duties of the prince, and the arrangement of the banqueting-house."

In the Southern Hemisphere the passage of the seasons is offset by half a year to those of the north, and the winter season associated with Samhain is met at the Eve of May. In November the Southern Lands enter the summer half of the year and the Fire Feast of November is best named there for the appropriate southern season, therefore Teine Samhradh Deas, the 'Southern Summer Fire', while the Fire Feast of May is best named for winter as Teine Geimhreadh Deas, the 'Southern Winter Fire'.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) P.W. Joyce (1903) 'A Social History of Ancient Ireland' Longmans, Green and Co., London. pp.264-266.

(2) The Wooing of Étaíne In: Jeffrey Gantz (1981) 'Early Irish Myths and Sagas' Penguin, London; Pwyll Lord of Dyfed in Jones, G. & Jones, T. (1949) 'The Mabinogion' Everyman, London; Gantz, J. (1976) 'The Mabinogion' Penguin. London..

(3) Sir James Frazer (1890 and 1922) The Golden Bough , 1994 reprint, Chancellor Press/Octopus, London. 'The Halloween Fires'

(4) Charles Squire (1905) 'Celtic Myth and Legend Poetry and Romance' re-published as 'Celtic Myth and Legend' in 1975 by Newcastle Publishing.

(5) Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick (1967) 'The Celtic Realms', Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.

(6) P.W.Joyce (1907) 'Old Celtic Romances' Wordsworth Editions Ltd in association with FLS Books, The Folklore Society (2000) p. 173.

(7) Douglas Hyde 1899 (1967 reprint) 'Literary History of Ireland from Earliest Times to the Present Day', Ernest Benn ltd, London. p. 247: The Bardic Schools "The Instruction of a Prince".