In Ireland, Halloween has been celebrated for centuries. The occasion comes from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the summer and the harvest season and the beginning of the winter months. It was also a time to honour the dead. When All Hallows’ Day (typically known as All Saints’ Day) was officially moved to the 1st of November by Pope Gregory IV, the day before became known as All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween. Over the years Newry and Mourne Museum has hosted many events to celebrate the Halloween season. This article will look back on some of our events and how they tie into our Halloween traditions.
Arts and crafts play a big role in the Museum’s activities, including making masks or false faces, a popular symbol of the spooky season. The Celts believed that during Samhain the dead could visit the human world and walk the earth. The wearing of false faces confused any evil spirits and meant they couldn’t recognise you, should you be unlucky enough to encounter one. The wearing of costumes to resemble evil spirits also comes from the Celtic tradition, again as a means of disguise and confusion. Large bonfires were also lit to ward off evil spirits.
Food also plays an important part in Halloween traditions. In our current temporary exhibition, ‘Slices of History: Memories of McCann’s Bakery’, visitors will find reference to barmbrack, a popular fruit bread at Halloween, which was used as way of telling the fortunes of those eating it. Traditionally, the bread was baked with several items in it, and whichever one you found would foretell your future. A ring symbolised an upcoming marriage, a pea meant no marriage, a coin indicated wealth and fortune, a piece of cloth brought bad fortune or poverty. Apples from the harvest were used to play games, such as bobbing or ducking for apples, where participants dunked their head in a basin of water in an effort to retrieve an apple. In Snap Apple, an apple was hung on a piece of string and the players had to take a bit from it, blindfolded and without using their hands. Nowadays, no Halloween would be complete without a slice of apple tart.
Storytelling is one the Museum’s most popular Halloween events. While ghost stories were traditionally told at Christmas time (the most famous being A Christmas Carol) they are now more associated with Halloween and help generate the right atmosphere for the day. The Museum has hosted the Armagh Rhymers, famous for their stories as well as the masks they wear. The masks are made from flax, willow and straw and are based on the characters of their stories, such as the bull mask for the Taín bulls. The Rhymers performance involves mumming (also known as guising) which is the art of masked individuals travelling from house to house to perform for food or money. This may have inspired the American tradition of Trick-or-Treating. Whilst America can be credited with carving out pumpkins for Jack-o-Lanterns, the tradition originated in Ireland, where turnips or swedes were used, and was taken to America by Irish immigrants.
The Museum also indulges in a Halloween hunt around the castle, emphasising the history of the building using markers such cauldrons, skeletons and ghosts to guide the young (and young at heart) around the galleries in search of clues to answer questions about this spooky season.
