Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 09:30 AM

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 09:50 AM

I> based on a misreading of the King James Bible

I'd call it an "adaptation" rather than a "misreading," but it's a minor point.

If anyone's interested, sometime in the '90s I heard a TV character mutter in a Halloween episode, "The *wall* between the worlds grow thin." Sorry I can't remember the series.

So if you want to believe in a wall instead of a veil, there's your source.

Here in the States, Halloween as a consuming fantasmagoria of trick-or-treat, candy and card sales, rented costumes, adult parties, etc., is a recent development.

Interestingly enough, the earliest known example of "Trick or treat!" comes from Alberta in 1927. According to the Lethbridge Herald of Nov. 4:

"TRICK OR TREAT IS DEMAND ... Hallowe'en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun.
No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word 'trick or treat' to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing."

Costumes are not mentioned, but mischief is. Othee 1940s. The commercial holiday is very much a post-1945 development.

The Butte, Montana, Standard (Oct. 29, 1937) reported on a school-sponsored Halloween parade (to discourage vandalism). The parade featured home-made costumes, and the article mentions the demand of "trick-or-treat."

Other early examples are also from "out West," but they're rare before the 1940s. The commercial holiday is very much a post-1945 phenomenon.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 10:54 AM

Hmm, didn't the "old ways" (and the oral tradition due largely to a lack of writing) persist in Ireland until about 800-ish after which while England had the dark ages Ireland became cohesive with roads and learning and stuff? I only vaguely remember something about that, in the context of St Patrick. Then the Xtian writers put an Xtian spin on what they recorded of the old ways. Or is my memory scrambled?

More amazingly - Blandiver here asserts that folklore is anonymous and ancient, yet elsewhere denies the same of folk song. Is it just that the former is rooted in his occult vision?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 10:55 AM

"1885 is close year zero for Folklore; before that few took any notice of these rude, crude customs and they might be survivals of. The Golden Bough was first published in 1890."

But long pre-empted, Jack ~~

"John Brand wrote Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain: Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares (1777), generally referred to as Popular Antiquities. (The incorporated work was the Popular Antiquities of Henry Bourne, published 1725, with Brand's own extensive annotations)" - wiki

~M~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Phil E
Date: 01 Nov 13 - 12:36 PM

SteveT - interesting, and I'm willing to believe my 'slim to none' is overstated. I'm not sure if Gregory's letter to Mellitus is evidence of very much, though. If you take out all the old idols, reconsecrate the ground and dedicate the building to Christian worship (as Gregory recommended), and if the building is then used as a church for 1000 years, surely what you've got at the end of it is a 1000-year-old Christian church. (And a 1000-year-old Christian church is a numinous thing in itself, charged with all those years of everyday, taken-for-granted belief.)

Relatedly, I never said I was talking about "recent Christianity" (your phrase, emph. added). I'd argue that England at the time of the folklore collectors had an official religion (C of E) and an old religion (pre-Reformation Catholicism), mostly forgotten but lingering in odd pockets. It'd be more fruitful (as well as making more historical sense) to look at popular ritual and belief for vestiges of that Old Religion.

I confess, I'm not an out-and-out sceptibunker; my hidden agenda is to get folkies to take Christianity seriously. More specifically, to take it seriously as a weird magical belief system (Christians tend to lose interest at this point) - but one which was particularly powerful because everyone believed in it, not that long ago. Take it from Tam Lin:

"Well, come tell me now, young Tambling," she says,
"If an earthly man you be."
"I'll tell you no lies," says young Tambling,
"I was christened as good as thee, me dear,
I was christened as good as thee."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 06:14 AM

Blandiver here asserts that folklore is anonymous and ancient, yet elsewhere denies the same of folk song. Is it just that the former is rooted in his occult vision?

Many aspects of culture process can be seen as anonymous / ancient if you stand back far enough. A lot of folklore is like this, and a lot of folk-song too, but the MEDIUM through which it flows is comprised of human individuals. When these individuals are as idiosyncratically creative as we know a lot of Traditions Singers to have been then it would folly to ignore their genius, or the fact that all music is , ultimately, a product of the self-same quality. Same goes with storytelling - I have first hand experience of this from having worked alongside one of The Great Traditional Storytellers of our time, now, sadly no longer with us.

In The Imagined Village Georgina Boyes quotes Joseph Jacobs (no less!) on the ability of storytellers of old who were immersed in their idiom that they might free-style narratives within classic Indo-European folk-tale morphology. Jazz musicians do this as a matter of course, likewise Rappers, and traditional musicians / singers the world over.

As an aside, I once heard of a Song Competition in Turkey (I think) where traditional song masters put needles between their upper & lower lip so as to exclude certain phonemes whilst free-styling ballads. Give us a P please, Bob! Ouch...

Despite this creative input, The Idiom remains - like any other musical idiom - folkloric & traditional. There are always rules & conventions. Just browse through the Heavy Metal section oat your local HMV for a perfect demonstration of how conservative these can be.

No individual musician has ever made up their own musical idiom - even that arch maverick Harry Partch was drawing on aesthetic & technical ideas going back out of time. His microtonal 43-note octave was derived from Pythagorean theory so he could delight in using the Perfect Thirds impossible on the standard Western tempered scale - itself a product of much folkloric to-ing and fro-ing. In any case he is part of The Tradition of musical experimentation in the New World, Partch's place is assured in perpetuity.

The nature of any musical tradition is allow individual musicians to shine all the brighter.

As we have seen in this thread, the inherently Celtic folklore of Halloween is decidedly more - er - occult. The veil between the two worlds is a real as our relationship with our personal dead who, irrespective of whether we be religious or no, will forever be so close that they might look over us...

Hermione Harvestman : All Souls

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 06:54 AM

These veils might be thin at other times too. Two examples : when Burd Ellen runs off widdershins around the church (a customary thing to do in my young day; indeed, at Earsdon, there was a fence at one of the church which we believed to be there to prevent such devilish practise, but it was no obstacle to we wee reprobates); & the bereaved lover in Cold Blows the Wind, predicated (according to John Kirkpatrick on the sleeve notes of ATMAATSWBARHCB) on the widespread belief the tears of the bereaved shed on a grave are enough to scald the dead. Talking of which, the funeral symbolism of The Veil is prevalent enough in graveyard sculpture these past 200 years or more.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 07:05 AM

PhilE –   I totally agree with you that your "Old Religion" is "a weird magical belief system". If Christianity started as a Jewish sect it has travelled a long way since and, leaving aside Orthodox Christianity of which I know nothing, it seems to have done much of that travelling in Western Europe, not least in Britain itself (look at the number of missionaries that originated from here in the "dark ages".) As such it is worth looking at what this western Christianity is built on. I'd argue that a lot of the "weird magical" practices, its iconography and relic veneration, its magical transubstantiation, its festivals and celebrations and even its version of heaven and hell owe a lot to the preceding beliefs of its followers.

"If you take out all the old idols, reconsecrate the ground and dedicate the building to Christian worship …. what you've got at the end of it is a 1000-year-old Christian church."   True it's a 1000-year-old Christian church but what has Christianity become during the 1000+ years? You remove the idols and replace them with "saints", many of whom scholars now believe were either total fabrications (St. Christopher) or real people who had grafted onto them the attributes of earlier deities (St. Bridget/Bridget of Kildare/Bride). (You also fill your churches with carvings of "green men") You also carry out your worship when and where the people would have been worshipping their pre-Christian deities. Although those people might nominally be practicing Christians, it makes you wonder how much their actual belief system, as opposed to the title under which they practiced it, had to change.

Perhaps, in addition, the two systems ran along side each other (as they seem to do today with some Catholics still happy to resort to fortune tellers, mediums etc.) As well as your example from Tam Lin, the author(s) of Thomas the Rhymer seem to have been quite prepared to accept a fairy realm existing in parallel to a Christian Heaven and Hell.

"Don't you see yon narrow, narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briars?
That is the road to righteousness,
Though after it but few enquire."
"Don't you see yon broad, broad road,
Lying lies across the lily leaven?
That is the road to wickedness,
Though some call it the road to heaven."
"Don't you see yon bonnie, bonnie road,
Lying across the ferny brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night must go."

Wimberly notes that most "magic" in the Child ballads seems to act totally independently of Christian belief; for example in "Willie's Lady" the disenchantment involves a type of counter-spell rather than any recourse to priests, church or God. Even Tam Lin was not rescued by Christian "magic" or because he was Christian but by a type of counter-spell. Wimberly gives plenty of other examples in his chapters on enchantment and disenchantment which have little to do with Christian teaching or accepted Christian practice so we have both the adoption of "pagan" practices by the church (saints etc) and the parallel thread of non-Christian magic, both of which existed in the population and probably influenced its song writing.

I don't think for a moment that the songs we sing today, no matter how old, were created by anything other than "practicing Christians" of some sort or another and therefore include plenty of the belief system that Christianity evolved into but I think that that belief system contains fragments of its predecessors and that those Christians also carried on a number of their pre-Christian "religious" cultural beliefs and practices in parallel with their church attendance. I don't think we'll ever know for sure which bits are which any more than we'll know for sure who wrote some of the songs, when, where or why – I'm just glad they were written.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 01:18 PM

Any pre-Christian "fragments and predecessors" like ghosties and goblins were left over at the level of fancy and superstition.

Christian doctrine (i.e., Christianity as taught in church) was developed by very unfolklike Church Fathers like St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas. They relied solely on what they considered to be Greek logic and Divine Revelation.

It's one thing to say that "pagan superstitions" have lingered for centuries, another to connect them directly to Christian observances.

They still believe in trolls in Iceland - more or less. But I don't see that as having any connection today with serious religious rituals.

In the clearly Christian "Beowulf," the Danes revert temporarily to paganism to cover all bases against the Grendel family. The fact that they could do so shows that the two systems were essentially distinct and that Christianity was still the norm.

What's more, it was a thousand years ago. The later church explained all earthbound supernatural creatures (like fairies) as fallen angels (i.e., demons) bent on deceit and destruction. (They explained pagan gods the same way.) Except perhaps for the reckless young, no sane medieval person would mess with them.

Even if they've been trapped by fairies, neither Thomas the Rhymer nor Tam Lin waste any time worshiping pagan gods.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 01:24 PM

I think I am with you in general Sean, but

"As we have seen in this thread, the inherently Celtic folklore of Halloween is decidedly more - er - occult. The veil between the two worlds is a real as our relationship with our personal dead who, irrespective of whether we be religious or no, will forever be so close that they might look over us..."

abd specifically:

"The veil between the two worlds is a real as our relationship with our personal dead"

seems like storytelling - fiction which is not based is fact - yes I know they exist on some kind of continuum - bit the extremes are not the same.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Anne Lister
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 02:54 PM

Just out of curiosity I checked with my copy of the Chambers Book of Days (which was published in 1875). There's a considerable amount in there on what was done then on 31st October in terms of mischief-making, fortune telling and so on, and the narrative clearly states that much of this is very old indeed. So, it was considered old in 1875 and much of it is still current. My Chambers Book of Days is an English publication. So let's not run away with the idea that the contemporary take on Hallowe'en is altogether a recent invention.
I'm not getting drawn into the rest of this discussion, though!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 06:10 PM

I should think Halloween has been buzzing with weirdness for as long as there's been a Halloween; after all, it is All Souls' Eve - the night before the annual commemoration of all the saints who don't get a day of their own. The Night of Forgotten Saints - put that way it sounds positively Lovecraftian.

Ironically, I think my difference with JB is that I think popular ritual practices are much more creative and spontaneous - and hence much more variable over time - than he seems to allow. I think there's a deep human urge to Do Stuff - symbolic, excessive stuff - and the stuff attaches itself in different ways to different occasions and seasons. I've never done factory work, but I used to work with people who had done and I remember two guys reminiscing about the treatment meted out to the low man on the totem pole in the warehouse where they used to work. The detail about Shrove Tuesday sticks in my mind – if you were the youngest guy on the team, on Shrove Tuesday you would make yourself very scarce; if your workmates found you, you'd get your balls painted black with boot polish. Why Shrove Tuesday? Why black knackers? Why not? Perhaps the reason why people hunted a wren on Boxing Day was just that hunting a wren is something that seems loaded with meaning and Boxing Day is a significant occasion.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 06:28 PM

Oddly I was just browsing a copy of Book of Days today in the Carnforth Bookshop...

*

seems like storytelling - fiction which is not based is fact - yes I know they exist on some kind of continuum - bit the extremes are not the same.

What I mean there, Les, is the relationship we have with those loved ones we have lost. I lost an dear friend through CF when we were both 22. I never mourned him because I never felt he'd left us; over 30 years later it still feels the same. If he came walking through the door now I wouldn't be at all surprised. When my old mother died 2 years ago I didn't feel any sense of loss (fair enough after 7 years of extreme stroke illness!) but a huge sense of release. I've lost loved ones who I've mourned bitterly, but there is always a strong sense of continuance. I guess I'm not alone in this.

Storytelling-wise the Irish Folk Tales volume (Henry Glassie ed.1985) in the Penguin Folklore Library as a great source of common-or-garden Ghostlore. Also, I recall a memorable conversation with the late, great Stanley Robertson who had a matter-of-fact view of the supernatural. To him it was as real as anything else & he regularly encountered ghosts. He told me if they were evil, the gooseflesh went up your spine, if they were evil, they went down.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 07:32 PM

after all, it is All Souls' Eve

All Saints' Eve, I should say - All Souls is the day after that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Nov 13 - 07:41 PM

Today in fact...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 30 Oct 14 - 07:59 PM

As the year turns again, this thread might be interesting to revisit!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 31 Oct 14 - 07:52 AM

Was that Hooky gig a year ago? Bloody hell. No such luck this year! I'm too fecking ill besides, so a night in with an episode of Supernatural (1977) that BBC4 have been kind enough to show as part of their Gothic Season (most of which I've recorded but will no doubt get forgotten about in the coming weeks, apart from Life & Loves of a She Devil which has me hooked afresh!). Oh, & we've just got Season 3 of Grimm on DVD, so we'll have an episode of that tonight too, and maybe The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral for good measure, though I've still to watch Robin Redbreast.

Choices, choices...

Folklore? Well I've Very Happy Indeed that Sing Out! have selected one of our songs for Halloween on their Facebook page, which we'll now do as part of our set at The Heretics in Sheffield supporting Phil & Cath on the 13th. AND I did carve an ornamental gourd this year, which I've sat on top of our TV in readiness for the evening:

On the Telly Tonight...

Oo (and indeed) Er.

Sedayne.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 31 Oct 14 - 07:28 PM

The imagery of the diabolical comes from four human sources, firstly the Roman theology of damnation of the Early Fathers, something of a consolidation of the disparate facets of non-JudeoChristian creeds, expressed as a somewhat hypothetical likelihood, secondly the crystallisation of this into a putative reality in the wave of plagues of the second half of the 14th Century, thirdly the divergence of fundamentalist Protestantism from the Roman Counter-Reformation in the Wars of Religion 1560-1650, and fourthly the rise of satanism and neo-paganism from the 1890s onwards. Right, if you survived that lot, let's have the Veil: it's a reference to the Holy of Holies in the First Temple in Jewish Jerusalem, in the period between Solomon and Josiah. That inner sanctum was only accessed once a year and by the High Priest alone: the rest of the time the Seat fo God's Presence on the Ark was covered in a veil, to keep God apart from man. There is no evidence it was covered in the peripatetic years between Moses and Solomon, however. Although the Ark disappeared under Josiah, none the less a veil seems to still haave been used in the Holy of Holies, as it's completely split during the Crucifixion. According to the records, that is.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: LadyJean
Date: 31 Oct 14 - 11:53 PM

I could reccomend Katherine Briggs "British Folktales" and an account titled "Witches on Halloween". It describes an English farm family who spend Halloween night protecting their home from witches. This includes leaving a plate of sandwiches on the front steps, in case a witch stops by and wants a snack.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 01 Nov 14 - 05:25 AM

One would do well well to bear in mind the non-Western prototypes of Christian demonic imagery as recent research (MacDermott et al) into (so-called) Triple Hare & Green Man imagery has shown. The horrors on offer in the sculpture of the Romanesque for example (of which Herefordshire is particularly blessed, most notably at St. Mary's, Kilpeck) would seem to be woven from various strands of Norse and Hinduism.

Not convinced that the literal / orthodox Temple Veil has anything to do with the metaphorical / vernacular Twilight Veil under discussion here. A further example of the latter existed in parts of Lancashire where there existed numerous Purgatory Fields. It was here that the Teanlowe Fires were lit as Catholic families prayed to / for the souls of their dead, the notion being that at this time of the year Purgatory was a good deal closer than at other times; the veil at its thinnest. (See The Stations of the Sun (Hutton, 1996. Ch. 36, pp. 372-3).

In the merry glow of this, whilst seeing if there was anything about the Teanlowe Fires on-line I came across this news item from a few years back where Lancastrian roughs attempted to set fire to a shopping centre named after the long vanished custom. Rites & Riots!

Teanlowe Blaze : Three Held

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 01 Nov 14 - 05:53 PM

Jack, you miss the core of my posting, though, that the diabolical is entirely a human construct, partly as a matter of vested interest inside the Church (Fire and Brimstone and we're the only answer), partially as a reaction to it (OK, having tried it we now know buying that answer's worse than the alternative, let's try it).
Sartre was subtle about it: what happens if simply discovering how wrong you were means you create your own kind of hell yourself, custom made by you for you?

This starts to focus on the human need for masochism. Even if it is only looking like a commercialised sucker with no artistic capacity whatsoever. I'm not arguing not having a conscience, what I am suggesting is that the appropriate treatment for such jumped-up numpties is a punch in the bracket and if they come back for more, rapid escalation. Bible Belt take note.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Nov 14 - 06:48 PM

The Great Pumpkin: Friend of Man or Fiend of Hell?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Blandiver (Astray)
Date: 04 Nov 14 - 05:54 AM

Ah, but from whence cometh our fear of ghosts if there are no ghosts to fear? Hence The Roaring Trade itself, no doubt - religion, magic, folklore, witchcraft, ghostlore, horror and all things ghastly that persist without a shred of objective evidence. And yet we all, even the most rational of us, have a Ghost Story, do we not? Such things become comforting in themselves even though we know not what they are, just that there is something that might betoken there is more to it, despite there being nothing to fear but fear itself... And what else is Fear but this nebulous, natural-born or otherwise atavistic capacity which culture has been swift to exploit for our general amusement simply because such things do scare us - even, if pushed, into objectivity...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Halloween and the 'thinning veil'
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 04 Nov 14 - 04:15 PM

It's a fear of death, in particular nasty, brutish forms of death. That's why I associated the development of the diabolical with the events of the day, the fall of the Roman Empire and arrival of barbarian dark ages (for all that the study of the period has proved they were not as dark as was considered in my youth), the plagues of the end of the 14th century, the Wars of Religion and the plagues which followed, and the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, with the ravages of disease seen in the late Victorian - the PR understates just how bad the death count of the 1850s actually was.

Each time, some cultural parasite (the Church, neopaganism) hooks into it. Let's not fall victim to it again, if ebola gets out of control.

For all I can see, the earliest use of the veil imagery in this sense goes back to Harriet Beecher Stowe in the mid 19th Century. She hooked into other forms of mysticism, in the Veronica veil, retained as a cult relic of the Crucifixion in one of Poussin's four iconastases of the St Peter's Baldaccino in the Vatican, and possibly the Milan shroud. This sense often occurs in the momento mori tomb effigies of the fourteenth century, showing the life form above and the shrouded skeleton underneath. That in turn moves into the shrouded form of "Fatso" ghost. However, that is a veil between the life form and the death form, not the spiritual form. The general sense in the Roman creed is studied here, which has nothing to do with the subject at hand: it serves to cover the angles one might look for in Aquinas and Augustine, however, in support of my hypothesis that the real roots lie in pseudo-Arthurian feminist texts typified by the work of Marion Zimmer Bradley, taking the work of the Victorian neogothicists on to the heart of the neowiccan and pagan imagery indicated.