Ghosts, piseógs and frightening folktales

Well-known seanachaí Eddie Lenihan recalls the dares and games of Halloween to Carl Dixon.

EDDIE Lenihan is a well-known seanachaí who came to national prominence in the 1980s with his 12-part RTÉ series Storyteller and Ten Minute Tales. He has also written numerous books and perhaps more importantly has recorded the tales of an older Irish generation, which otherwise would have been lost.

Lenihan has a particular interest in fairies and the beliefs that older generations had about them, and in 1999 he led a successful campaign to prevent a sceach, or fairy bush, from being destroyed by roadworks in Co Clare. The storyteller has also had an enduring fascination with haunted places, fairy paths and holy wells and his stories for both adults and children are by turns comedic, haunting and grotesque.

Born in Brosna in Kerry, he obtained an MA in phonetics before a brief and unlikely job with the Revenue Commissioners, followed by a long stretch as a teacher. Although rarely in one place for long, technically he lives in Crusheen, Co Clare.

“This for us is the end of autumn and the first day of winter, but in olden times, for the Celts it marked the end of the entire year. Their other quarter feast days were Imbolc (which has been Christianised to St. Brigid’s Day), Bealtaine (May Eve) and Lunasa (Garland Sunday, Domhnach Chrom Dubh).

“Samhain and Bealtaine were the two rent-payment days in Ireland and by Samhain every farmer worth the name was expected to have his crops secured for the winter ahead.

“When this was done it was a time for celebration and fun, when adults and children alike could enjoy themselves for a little while with fun and games, nuts, apples, candles stuck in turnips, etc. This sense of jollity remains even today, though pumpkins have replaced the turnips and shop goods have overtaken the home-made varieties of almost every article (even barm-brack) and it is children almost exclusively who celebrate the festival.

“This was also a time for dares and games, for example daring a boastful person to go to a haunted place, or a graveyard or fairy fort and bring back something to prove he’d been there. Part of the celebration of the night was the playing of tricks on neighbours, especially on those seen to be cantankerous or mean-spirited. By comparison with some of the things being done today most of those were quite harmless, indeed funny. But to the person on the receiving end they could sometimes be baffling. And the victim was always carefully chosen.

“I well recall four examples from my home place in Kerry. The first involved keeping a close eye on a man who took his few pints every night. On one night as soon as he left for the pub, “the boys” went to his yard, took the wheels off his ass-cart, manhandled cart and wheels into the house. They then brought in the ass, tackled him to the cart, and when the poor man arrived home later to find the ass fully tackled in the kitchen …. God only knows what he must have thought about the quality of the porter that night! Another one was where the “lads” painted the windows of an old bachelor’s house with tar. The poor man had no idea when morning came. It was said afterwards that he didn’t come out for three days, until he got hungry.

“Another was throwing wet sacks on people’s chimneys where there was a height behind the house. The door would have been tied beforehand, of course, from the outside, and when the kitchen began to fill up with smoke from the open fire the so-called “fun” would begin! Drunks on their way home on this night were liable to be waylaid. I recall one such case, where the man in question, asleep at the roadside, had his Wellingtons removed, then his trousers. His Wellingtons were then put back on and he was left there in his drawers. Imagine what he must have felt like when he woke, sobered somewhat and cold, in the morning! Luckily there was little motor traffic on the roads in those days.

“But apart from such fun, if fun it can be called, Halloween was — and still is for some of the oldest of the old generation — genuinely a time when that veil which separates our world from the next one, the other one, is at its very thinnest, when those who live in “the place beyond” can visit us here.

“It was especially believed that the souls in purgatory could visit their former homes on this night, for in the Irish Celtic tradition dead people come and go. Exactly at the hour of midnight that was the time that both ghosts and fairies could appear in our world and we could be ‘carried’ into theirs.

“The belief that the ‘poor souls’, especially the souls of your own dead, might come back on that night caused not so much fear as a wish to have a welcome for them if them should come That was why the hearth was cleaned that night and a little meal left on the table.”