Caer Australis - The Celtic Fire Feasts: Samhain

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 Geamhreadh, known in Old Irish as Gaimred and Old Welsh as Gaem, and anciently in Gaul, the month of Giammon, the seventh month of the calendar at the start of winter. Whitely Stokes (1868) explained the origin of the name Samhain as being derived from the word for an assembly, from samhuil, 'same',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. Emer explains to Cú Chulaind that Samhain is the time when 'summer goes to rest', invoking the word sámhach, meaning quiet or still, and in 1903 Joyce explains (1) it is derived from sam, summer, and fuin, to end, sunset, and thus 'summer's end'.

Marking the start of Geamhreadh, the cold winter, Samhain is strongly associated with the dead and the Celtic otherworld of the Sidhe and Annwfn (2), for it marks the start of the winter half of the Celtic year and the coming cold and dark days. 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. 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.

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'.

As the traditional Celtic fire feasts became adapted and modified to suit the needs of Christianity, Samhain became co-opted in the year AD 834 into All Hallow's Eve/All Saints Day through the movement of this Roman festival to November eve. Halloween today is an admix of all things spooky, continuing in its commercialised form an echo of its two-culture origins.

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'. They further describe an example of Samhain in Irish literature:

'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 side 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 síd, 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 mood of death and cold ought not be the only way to view Samhain. It carries hope for the future and the safety of all over the harsh times ahead, and is founded on the hard work and toil of the preceding summer. With the hearth fires cleaned and rekindled, and with laws to ensure the good management of animal stock, Samhain marked the half of the year where the people lived indoors - 'during the second half [of the Celtic year], namely from Samhain to Bealtaine, they lived...quartered...during the winter half of the year' (6).

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"

Samhain opens the second dark winter half of the Celtic year, shown in the structure of the Celtic year recorded in the 16th Century in the Fennian tale 'Tóraigheacht an Ghiolla Dheacair: The pursuit of the Giolla Dacker and his horse', where a beltaine beginning and a samhain middle is explicitly recorded: "One day in the beginning of summer, Finn mac Cumhail feasted the chief people of Erin and when the feast was over, the Fena reminded him that it was time to begin the chase through the plains and the glens and the wilderness of Erin. For this was the manner in which the Fena used to spend their time. They divided the year into two parts. During the first half, namely, from Bealtaine to Samhain, they hunted each day with their dogs; and during the second half, 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' - P.W.Joyce recorded this in 1907 and is is widely available today through publication of 'Old Celtic Romances' by the Folkloric Society (now published on-line).

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".