Spock’sPox⚛️

Halloween, 2,000 years ago, Rathcroghan, County Roscommon. We stand on a vast Iron Age mound beneath a star-crowded sky. This is Cruachan, royal seat of the kings of Connacht. A chain of torches snakes through the dark toward a roaring bonfire, and the wind carries woodsmoke, roasting meat and the lowing of cattle and chanting. It's Samhain, the Celtic New Year, which begins at sunset on the eve of what we now call the 1st of November. Summer is dead, the herds are down from the hills, and the surplus animals have been slaughtered. People have travelled for days to feast, trade, race horses, settle disputes and make matches. It is a night outside time, when the veil to the Otherworld is thin. Hooded figures move around the flames, and a haunting bronze horn bellows across the hilltop. Druids, perhaps, though we know far less than we pretend. Roman writers described Druid sacrifice in Gaul but nothing was written in Ireland until Christian monks, no friends of the old gods, began recording the tales. They speak of children offered to the idol Crom Cruach. Archaeology has never confirmed it. Nearby yawns Oweynagat, the Cave of the Cats, a limestone fissure said to be a gateway to the Underworld. At Samhain, the Morrígan would emerge from it with monstrous creatures. Here too lingers Medb, the warrior queen of the Táin, whose legend is bound to this place. Yet the hard evidence is chilling enough. Bog bodies like Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man, from around 2,300 years ago, died brutally and were left at tribal borders. Archaeologists suspect they were kings, sacrificed to ensure the land's fertility. As for costumes, guisers in straw, skins and masks, chasing off the dead, are recorded only in much later folk tradition. Yet they may echo something far older. The name Halloween itself is Christian, from All Hallows' Eve, once the Church moved its feast of saints to 1 November. We would leave bowls of water out for the parched souls in purgatory. Oíche Shamhna shona duit!