Halloween and the Ritual of Transformation

Then would I never tire, Janet,
In Elfish land to dwell,
But aye, at every seven years,
They pay the teind to hell;
And I am sae fat and fair of flesh,
I fear 'twill be mysell.

This night is Halloween, Janet,
The morn is Hallowday,
And if ye dare your true love win,
Ye have nae time to stay.

The night it is good Halloween,
When fairy folk will ride,
And they that would their true-love win,
To Miles Cross they must bide.

From the Ballad of Tam Lin

Samhain is upon us: more commonly known as Halloween.

In fact the ancient Celtic festival of “summer’s end” – which is what the word probably means – is older than the Christian festival of All Hallow’s Eve, though the two share a common theme. They are festivals of the dead.

You can see why. This time of year smells of death. It is ripe fruit and fermentation, rotting leaves and mushroom spoors. The smell of sweet decay. The winter nights are drawing in, and there is the sense of melancholy in the air. The light is in decline, and the dark is on the rise. In the eternal battle between night and day, the night is winning.

The ancient Celtic people considered it a time when the veil between the worlds was rent, and the dead would walk amongst us. Hence the association with ghosts and ghouls and creatures of the night. People would dress up in disguises so that the dead could pass amongst us, and often an extra place was laid at table for the ancestors to join the meal.

There was huge fire which people would throw animal bones onto. Hence it’s name: a “bone-fire”. Our bonfire night is just a continuation of the same festival, only moved slightly to accommodate the change in emphasis. The “Guy” suggests a sacrifice. Sometimes two fires were built and the people would pass between them, to purify themselves. They would drive their herds between the fires to ward of sickness and disease. The fires are the means of protecting us from the darkness, of giving succour to the light.

The old Scottish ballad Tam Lin * is set on Halloween.

The poem opens with a warning. The maidens are warned not to go to a place called Carterhaugh because it is haunted by an elf called Tam Lin, or Tamlane. No maiden goes to Carterhaugh, but she will lose either her gold ring, her green mantle or her maidenhead.

Now gold rings ye may buy, maidens,
Green mantles ye may spin,
But, if ye lose your maidenhead,
Ye'll ne’er get that again.

But Janet refuses to take the advice and goes to Carterhaugh anyway, where she plucks a rose. Tam Lin appears, and asks by what right she takes what belongs to him? Because Carterhaugh is mine she says. It was given to me by my father.

Whereupon Tam Lin takes her by the hand and leads her to the bushes..

He's taken her by the milk-white hand,
Among the roses red,
And what they did I cannot say,
She ne’er return’d a maid.

Back in her father’s house she comes down with a sickness, and her father guesses that she is with child. She admits that she is, but tells him that no man in the castle can lay claim to her, because the child does not have a human father. It is an elfin child.

She goes back to Carterhaugh and she plucks two roses, and which point Tam Lin appears, warning her that if she plucks any more she will kill the child. Tam Lin then tells her that he was once a human, but had fallen from his horse at the age of nine and been captured by the Queen of the Fairies. But every seventh year, at Halloween, he says, the fairies pay a tithe to hell, and he is fearful that this year it will be his turn. He asks her to rescue him.

But how will she recognise him, she asks? She is to wait at Miles Cross till the fairy ride passes by. She must ignore the first company and wait for the next. Then she must ignore the black horse, and the brown horse, and wait for the white steed as it passes by. She must lay hold of the rider and bring him down and not let him go. A series of magical transformations will occur. He will become an adder and then an asp, and then a burning lump of coal - which she must dip in first in milk, and then in water - and then a toad and an eel and a dove and a swan. The transformations vary, depending on the version of the ballad you are reading. Sometimes he is turned into a bear, and sometimes a lion, and a variety of other creatures. Finally he will turn into a naked man, and she must cover him with her mantle, and hold to him fast.

She does all that he asks, until finally she is holding the father of her child, naked, in her arms.

The Queen of the Fairies is not best pleased, but she has to admit that Janet has won the right to her own true love.

Thus the girl wins her knight and rescues him from Hell, and her child is given a human father.

In this way life is saved from death, and the earthly from the unearthly. There is a sense of ritual here, and of a charm being cast, with the hot coal dipped in milk and then water. It is a ritual of transformation. She must hold fast to her love in all his changing aspects. He has had his humanity stolen from him and she must bring it back. He has been under a spell since he was nine years old. There is something deep in this story, about the return to humanity after an absence, about the faith and determination needed to find love. It is the story of true love won from the spell of illusion on this magical night of transformation.

For that, finally, is the message of Halloween.