Halloween Folklores#1

So seeing as it's coming up to Halloween, I thought I'd do a series of threads unravelling some of the old folklores and explanations of today's Halloween traditions and urban legends. So I hope some of you find these as interesting as I did on the lead up to Halloween

Bobbing For Apples?



Samhain, a precursor to our All Hallows' Eve or Halloween celebration, occurred at a time that was a magical for the Celts of Britain. A time when the veil separating the worlds of the living and dead was its thinnest. A time when the distinction between past, present, and future would blur. Many of the earliest Halloween games took advantage of this belief and were based on divining the future.

When the Romans conquered Britainthey brought with them the apple tree. The apple was representative of the goddess Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees. She was known for her great beauty and fertility. Romans, although conquerors, Romans were accepting of other cultures and soon accepted Celtic beliefs and the Samhain festival. The two were blended together and the apple became part of the harvest celebration that would become Halloween.

Because Pomona was a fertility goddess and because the Celts believed that the pentagram was a fertility symbol and when an apple is sliced in half the seeds form a pentagram it is natural that they believed the apple could be used to determine marriages during this magical time of year?. From this belief comes the game bobbing for apples. During the annual celebration young unmarried people try to bite into an apple floating in water or hanging from a string. The first person to bite into the apple would be the next one to marry.

While the apple may or may not have had any ability to predict the future it brought people together from distant farms and villages who may otherwise have never had contact with others outside their own families. This was very important as most people did not live through their childhoods. Marriage and fertility were extremely important. Without children there would be nobody to carry on your genes. If you didn't have a large supply of children there wouldn't be enough labor to survive. In this respect bobbing for apples wasn't just a game but a matter of life or death.

There are other explanations of the game that all originate around a form of fortune telling. British author W. H. Davenport Adams, who attributed belief in the prognosticative power of apples to "old Celtic fairy lore," described the game as follows in his 1902 book, Curiosities of Superstition:

[The apples] are thrown into a tub of water, and you endeavour to catch one in your mouth as they bob round and round in provoking fashion. When you have caught one, you peel it carefully, and pass the long strip of peel thrice, sunwise, round your head; after which you throw it over your shoulder, and it falls to the ground in the shape of the initial letter of your true love's name.

 

apparently

 

You've never heard of bobbing for apples?

 

It's a Halloween tradition

 

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I didn't know it wasn't really celebrated in Aus. Yeah I love reading about old folklores...I can't wait to do the thread about urban legends....sooooo interesting to know that freaky stuff actually happened at some point stay tuned

 

I can imagine you we're entertained for hours Amy?....just reaching into the bucket is a challenge for us small folk??

I'm glad it's interested some of you. I love looking into the history's and meanings behind things

 

Yes indeed, it's the month the Irish pagans celebrate the 'feast of the dead'.....believed to be the precursor to the actual Halloween holiday we celebrate now.

Not only did the Celts believe the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead dissolved on this night, they thought that the presence of the spirits helped their priests to make predictions about the future.

To celebrate Samhain the Druids built huge sacred bonfires. People brought harvest food and sacrificed animals to share a communal dinner in celebration of the festival.

During the celebration the Celts wore costumes - usually animal heads and skins. They would also try and tell each other's fortunes.

After the festival they re-lit the fires in their homes from the sacred bonfire to help protect them, as well as keep them warm during the winter months.

 

I'm quite shocked people have never heard of apple bobbing. Perhaps it's a more British tradition.