09/10/2023
🎃🎃 Join us for Halloween when we will delve into some of the folklore and stories associated with this Irish festival date. . . both modern and from the past.
For the Irish Celts, the year was divided into a light half and a dark half. As the day was seen as beginning at sunset, so the year was seen as beginning with the arrival of the darkness, at Samhain (November in the modern calendar). The light half of the year started at Bealtaine (May in the modern calendar).
Today it is traditionally celebrated from the very beginning of one Celtic day to its end, or in the modern calendar, from sunset on 31 October to sunset on 1 November, this places it about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. It was the time when cattle were brought back down from the summer pastures and when livestock were slaughtered for the winter. Special bonfires were lit and these were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers and there were rituals involving them.
Like Bealtaine, Samhain was seen as a magical time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld could more easily be crossed. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into our world, but while Bealtaine was a summer festival for the living, Samhain "was essentially a festival for the dead". Tradition involved people going door-to-door in costume (or in disguise), often reciting verses in exchange for food. The costumes may have been a way of imitating, and disguising oneself from, the Aos Sí (faerie folk).
Join us for a tour with Treasa & Sean on the Hill and learn of the associated stories, lore, characters and Irish deities of Samhain / Halloween.
Tour Date: 29th October @ 13:00
Eircode: N91 R6C9
Link to book in BIO / HERE : https://linktr.ee/Uisneach
** Our Samhain Event will take place 11th Nov @ the Meadow - Booking coming soon 🔥
