Samhain is a very old celtic festival and is also the name of month 11 in the |Irish calendar. It marks the end of the celtic year and all savable crops would be in storage for the winter ahead. October ,by the way is called Deireadh Fomhair in Irish ,meaning the end of the harvest. All Hallows eve or the eve of All Saints is known in some parts of Donegal as Oíche Féile na marbh, or the eve of the festival of the dead. On this night people who had died in each household had the power to return to the home they shared whilst alive.As darkness extinguishes the shortening daylight it is easy to become morbid. But if the turf harvest was good then the season for storytelling had arrived and people would gather around the fire in favourite houses where a good 'seanchaí' would regale old and young with tales of Fionn, Goll, Caoilte and the rest of that great Gaelic host of heroes, or maybe Cú Chualainn or the 'slua sí'.
In my younger days children learned a few rhymes and went around the houses as Halloween Rhymers. I don't think you would get much of a rhyme these days no matter how generous you were. And if you are a bit tight fisted you might hear some lovely old Anglo-Saxon words spouted in your direction. But "out of the mouths of babes..........2
Oíche Shamhna shona daoibh
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