Remember, remember the Fifth of November
When shadowy horrors did come to dismember...
SAMHUIN celebrations in Scotland have long involved bonfires as with all the great festivals. Bonfires at this time of year had some practical application in clearing up dead leaves and unwanted cuttings after the harvest reaping was well and truly done. This provided some closure to end of the toil of the harvest and to the beginning of a relatively leisurely quarter of the year marked by feasts, fires, weaving and hunting before the ploughing season began nearer to Imbolg. These bonfire practices were absorbed into such synchronic Christian festivals as All Hallows’, All Souls’, Martinmas and Saint Catherine’s Day. The mid-point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is in fact nearer to the 5th November. In Britain, this is marked by ‘Bonfire Night’ when impassive British rigidity is briefly lapsed to engage in riotous explosions and burning. These traditions began in England when many Scots were settling there after the King of Scots became the king of the whole isle of Britain whereupon the Scottish kings chose to rule the whole island from England rather than from Scotland. An act of insurgence against the Crown gave the Scottish settlers an ostensible pretext to continue in England the types of bonfires that had long taken place in Scotland, and it gave them this pretext at a time when any superstitious behaviour was met with disapproval from a very puritanical establishment. The pretext of the bonfires’ celebrating the king’s triumph over insurgency was flattering to the establishment which then refrained from disallowing the bonfires and the addition of other patriotic outpourings of emotion.
The times in which the English adopted these Scottish customs were fraught with religious fanaticism from an absolutism-obsessed monarchy which the English people had to obey or be tried for treason. In this atmosphere, the customs had to take on a pro-establishment thread or be lost entirely to the all-levelling force of the Crown.
SAMHUIN celebrations in Scotland have long involved bonfires as with all the great festivals. Bonfires at this time of year had some practical application in clearing up dead leaves and unwanted cuttings after the harvest reaping was well and truly done. This provided some closure to end of the toil of the harvest and to the beginning of a relatively leisurely quarter of the year marked by feasts, fires, weaving and hunting before the ploughing season began nearer to Imbolg. These bonfire practices were absorbed into such synchronic Christian festivals as All Hallows’, All Souls’, Martinmas and Saint Catherine’s Day. The mid-point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is in fact nearer to the 5th November. In Britain, this is marked by ‘Bonfire Night’ when impassive British rigidity is briefly lapsed to engage in riotous explosions and burning. These traditions began in England when many Scots were settling there after the King of Scots became the king of the whole isle of Britain whereupon the Scottish kings chose to rule the whole island from England rather than from Scotland. An act of insurgence against the Crown gave the Scottish settlers an ostensible pretext to continue in England the types of bonfires that had long taken place in Scotland, and it gave them this pretext at a time when any superstitious behaviour was met with disapproval from a very puritanical establishment. The pretext of the bonfires’ celebrating the king’s triumph over insurgency was flattering to the establishment which then refrained from disallowing the bonfires and the addition of other patriotic outpourings of emotion.
The times in which the English adopted these Scottish customs were fraught with religious fanaticism from an absolutism-obsessed monarchy which the English people had to obey or be tried for treason. In this atmosphere, the customs had to take on a pro-establishment thread or be lost entirely to the all-levelling force of the Crown.
The times in which the English adopted these Scottish customs were fraught with religious fanaticism from an absolutism-obsessed monarchy which the English people had to obey or be tried for treason. In this atmosphere, the customs had to take on a pro-establishment thread or be lost entirely to the all-levelling force of the Crown.
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