Tag Archives: Halloween

Tamlane by Anne Rundle

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Tamlane by Anne Rundle was first published in 1970. The setting is Halloween/Hallowmas in the Scottish Border country.

Seonaid was born at Hallowmas, it’s her 17th birthday and she’s the daughter of  a Border Chieftain.  Her mother died on the night she was born and she’s looked after by her nurse Anna who has warned her never to wander far from her home at Hallowmas as it’s the night the spirits are abroad.

Anna is preparing for the Hallowmas/birthday gathering when Seonaid asks her if she can ride out on her horse, but Anna says she must take Wat with her, he’s part  of the household. But Seonaid is determined to get away on her own and she manages to do so by duping him, and so begin all her troubles.

She finds what she thinks is a talisman in the woods. When she meets a tall young man Seonaid assumes that it’s his talisman and he is looking for it, but when she offers it to him he seems afraid of it and backs off. His name is Tamlane and Seonaid can’t stop thinking about him. As people born on Hallowmas have the second sight she wonders if he was real, or did she imagine him? The Hallowmas gathering ends in disaster which starts a feud between families and more disaster. Seonaid has to fight with elves and fairies.

This is a fantasy which is loosely based on the folk tale Tam Lin

It was a good Halloween read, although not particularly a happy read. I had completely forgotten that when I was a wee girl we called the face masks we wore at Halloween  ‘false faces’. It brought back the memory and even the smell of them – not at all a nice smell, but I quite enjoyed the book which I must admit I bought because I liked the cover design.

Ripon Cathedral, Yorkshire

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Ripon has never been on my list of places that I want to visit but when we realised that we were just a few miles away from the city, during our recent trip to Yorkshire, we thought we might as well take a look at it. It’s actually a really lovely cathedral, and I don’t much go for big religious structures, but this one has a good atmosphere, almost as friendly as Durham.

As yesterday was Hallowe’en, that makes today All Saints’ Day, so it seems apt to have a cathedral post today. I’m not madly keen on organised religion but I always like to have a look at the local churches.

Ripon Cathedral

This is the front door from the inside and as you can see they’ve added some modern glass underneath the medieval stained glass windows. Unfortunately the glass never seems to look half as good in photos as it does in real life. You don’t have to pay to go in to the cathedral but obviously they’re keen on donations as it costs such a lot to keep it standing.

front entrance stained glass

I remember when I was reading someone’s review of Trollope’s Barchester books that they didn’t understand all the church politics, and didn’t know the difference between high and low church. Well, this is high church, often referred to as ‘smells and bells’ because apart from the very ornate decor ‘high’ means the use of bells and incense at particular times during the church service. It’s almost indistinguishable from Roman Catholoic, although this is of course a Church of England cathedral.

I love stained glass, it’s the colours that get me, somehow they always seem so much more vibrant in backlit glass than at any other time. This is quite a modern window and as you can see, the altar cloth is also modern but a beautiful design, quite three dimensional which doesn’t quite show up in the photo.

a side altar +stained glass

aRipon Cathedral, Yorkshirefront altar and figures

Ripon Cathedral has definitely been a patron of the arts over the years. The side chapel below has really wonderful textural metal work, as you can see. They were busy setting up an art exhibition at the time we were there, it seems to be quite a hub of the community, which you can’t say of all cathedrals.

a side chapel modern art

Yet another altar, the original I would think, and more stained glass.

stained glass in Ripon Cathedral, Yorkshire

This one is a very small window but I think it’s quite unusual to see stained glass in shades of yellow and green and it looked really zingy wth the sun coming through it.

stained glass in Ripon Cathedral, Yorkshire

Halloween circa 1995

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This is Gordon our youngest son just about to go out ‘guising’ with his turnip lantern, I think he’s about eight years old and his brother Duncan, who was all of nine and a half had decided that he was too old to get dressed up for Halloween. It’s a shame that they grow up so quickly. Gordon is a pirate in these photos and trying to look fierce in the one on the right but in previous years he was a wizard, long before Harry Potter. He’s supposed to have a beard rather than look dirty. When I was wee I usually dressed up as a witch but I remember one year around about 1969 when I was ten I went as a flower power hippy.

The word guising obviously comes from disguise but it’s only used in Scotland, in fact until quite recently people in England didn’t celebrate Halloween because it’s originally a Celtic thing.

There have been lots of people in the media complaining about it all because they see it as an Americanisation but they’re comnpletely wrong about that. They don’t seem to quite understand how it’s meant to be celebrated either. People have been having trouble with kids who are using it as an excuse to behave badly and cause mayhem around their neighbourhood, throwing eggs at houses and the like. They should just be visiting houses that they know they’ll be welcomed at and after singing a song or reciting a poem or something then they might get some sweets or if they’re very lucky a small amount of money.

I think it’s strange that the parents in my neighbourhood decided to celebrate Halloween on Saturday, surely the whole reason for doing it is that it is done on All Hallows Eve which is definitely October the 31st. Would they change the day of Christmas?!

Anyway, have a good Halloween. Don’t let the ghosties get you!

Scottish Hallowe’en

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In recent years Halloween has become very popular in parts of Britain where it had been completely unknown before, and by that I mean England. Unfortunately it is the American version of it featuring pumpkins, which are completely alien growths in Britain. Sadly, because there are now no Scottish owned supermarkets we aren’t even able to buy the big turnips which are a necessity for making the carved turnip lanterns which ward off evil spirits.

And here it is lit.

I had to make do with this small turnip and yes, I do know that in England this is what is called a swede, but as far as we are concerned there is nothing Scandinavian about it at all! Say no to pumpkins, unless you happen to be American. Seriously, I once carved a pumpkin and I couldn’t believe how horrible it smelled, just like sick. How could anyone possibly eat them, maybe that one was over-ripe. Are they supposed to smell of sick.

When I was a wee girl Hallowe’en was a really big thing and there were always school/Brownies/Scout parties where we dooked for apples and ate huge pancakes which had been spread with black treacle and strung up across the room. With hands behind your back and up on tiptoe to reach the pancakes, there was just no way you could eat them without getting your hair and face covered with treacle. We were all dressed up as witches, warlocks, ghosts or pirates too. Such fun!!

When we went out dressed like that it was called ‘guising’, obviously because you were in disguise. We were only allowed to visit the houses of friends or relatives and we had to sing a song or tell jokes, something to entertain the householders anyway. In return we would be given some fruit, nuts or sweets and sometimes a small amount of money.

There was none of this terrible chaos that seems to go on nowadays, especially in England, where they seem to have got the wrong end of the stick altogether.

Hallowe’en is the old pagan festival signifying the end of summertime, which it is literally as we’ve just moved the clocks back an hour and we’re now on Greenwich Mean Time.