Growing up, Halloween at home in the US was always a big thing. My grandma would send us sweets shaped like jack-o-lanterns and bats, we’d go to a pumpkin patch and pick ours to carve, and we’d eagerly plan our costumes for trick-or-treating. October still marks those traditions for me (and I’ll always welcome a time I can fulfill the urge to run into a corn field and get lost!) But this year, trick or treating isn’t operating as usual. And life is strange. So, I read A Treasury of British Folklore: Maypoles, Mandrakes and Mistletoe by Dee Dee Chainey, which I’ve had for a while. Halloween in the UK seems much more alluring knowing the superstitions and legends that exist – and in my everyday life I’ll be looking for them.
Nature surrounds most myths, and in the green city of Sheffield you can easily imagine the streets and hills are full of otherworldly creatures. Rivers especially have always been sacred and their ancient thrum of power is easy to imagine as they slink on. The Thames in particular has ‘hoards’ of arrows and weapons from peoples who would send them into the river. So for the River Rivelin and the River Don, it’s easy to imagine river spirits that wait in the depths. Water in the North of England has many myths, such as the Grindylow. Said to be from Yorkshire and Lancashire, they have long arms that drag children into the water to drown them, and some think they must take a life regularly to be appeased. Northern England myths also describe Shelly Coats, mischievous water spirits with coats made of shells that ‘rattle.’
Significance in folklore is also given to trees, which you will have no problem seeing in Sheffield. In some places, an acorn in the window is said to keep lightning out, and some say oak trees groan and shriek when being cut down.
The halloween-y figure of a black cat is another easy-to-spot ‘myth’. But the superstition around seeing a black cat is more complicated than I thought it was; I thought they were always supposed to mean bad luck. However, some folklore from Yorkshire says it’s lucky to own a black cat, but unlucky to meet one. And some believe that a black cat walking towards you is meant to bring luck, but away would ‘take’ the luck with it.
Similarly, a hare is said to be the unluckiest animal to meet in Yorkshire.
Walking dark streets at night in the chill of October, in the right light, you could imagine seeing the creature from Yorkshire lore, the barquest. It takes the form of a bear or black dog, with eyes as big as saucers, and is said to haunt streets at night and, like the banshee, its howls are heard at night by the person who is meant to die. Spellings vary, and it seems almost every region in the UK has its own name for the form of a dark bear-dog. I’ll try not to remember that and check over my shoulder as the sun sets earlier and earlier- and it’s so easy to be caught in the dark.
Although less malevolent, it’s also said fairies are most easily seen at dusk or dawn, playing in fields or dancing in circles. Stories of fae or faeries or fairies (whichever you prefer) are very popular in folklore, and fairy rings – easy to spot dark rings in the grass or rings of mushrooms – are imagined to be a place where they have danced.
Rather than a legend to spot, in nearby Bakewell as well as many parts of Derbyshire, a “Blessing of the Wells” takes place that you could visit. This custom can be traced back to multiple stories about its origins, one of them is that it stems from the worship of water spirits. Another is that in the period after the Black Death, villages that were untouched thought it was because of their water supply. The village of Tissington is one example, and they still dress their wells; although I wonder if it’s in thanks or precaution.
In folklore, All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween welcomes the approach of winter along with the beliefs that it’s a period when spirits roam the earth, and a time to honor the dead. In my probably pretty American interpretation, Halloween brings to mind tons of candy, and shuffling around my neighborhood in a hat, coat, snow pants and mittens under costumes. But more than that, it marks autumn and the beginning of winter. If this is how I interpret 31 October, learning of the past brings some scope to ask, how will it be celebrated in the future?