Happy Hallowe'en

A Neepie Luntrin by Charles Hemingway http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/a-neepie-luntrin-106554

Looking for an alternative to neepie lanterns and the like this evening? Then you might like to go along to the Pier Arts Centre at 7.30pm when the Writing the North Project will be holding a public event called 'Creative Journeys'. 

Local writers Pamela Beasant, Yvonne Gray, Morag MacInnes and Alison Miller will be joined academics for an evening of readings,  talks, and discussion on how writers write in Orkney, both now and in previous centuries. The event is free and open to all.  

Festive Knitting

Can you believe it is nearly the end of October already? Tonight the clocks go back, then the darkness will creep into the afternoons, and soon it will be time to think about preparing for Christmas. In fact here at the Library preparations are already under way, as the Yap & Yarn groups are busy knitting and crocheting squares to create their very own woolly Christmas tree for the Orkney Library and Archive. 

If any knitters/crocheters out there would like to help us with this project then we would be delighted to receive donations of squares up to a maximum size of 21cm x 21cm (8 inches) in any shade of green and in various weights of yarn and stitch patterns. We would also love any knitted/crochet  decorations for the finished tree. 

As you can see from the photo we will need plenty of squares to cover our improvised tree structure!

But first we have Hallowe'en to enjoy and we wonder if any of our Yap & Yarners will be bringing along Hallowe'en themed projects when we meet here in Stromness Library on Monday (28th) at 5pm-7pm? 

A quick search of the wonderful pattern resources on Ravelry revealed a multitude of spooky yarn creations, from the fun of Wanda the Witch:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wanda-the-witch

the cuteness of the Sweet Pumpkin hat:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/0-966-sweet-pumpkin---pumpkin-hat-in-karisma

the whackiness of the Scare Isle tam:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/scare-isle

 

to the sheer wrongness of the Hallowe'en Horror Hand!:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/halloween-horror-hand

Whether you aspire to knit a square or a scare, come along and join us on Monday for Yap & Yarn. All abilities welcome, there will be experienced knitters and crocheters on hand to help even the newest beginners get started, and to offer advice and help, so don't be scared - unless of course you're planning to use your ball of yarn for a spot of Hallowe'en divination. 

Hallowe'en

The Stromness Library Reading Group meets tonight to discuss Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, a suitably dark text for our Hallowe'en meeting!

In the days before pumpkins and 'trick or treat' came to Stromness, children could look forward to some equally tasty, though slightly healthier treats, as George Mackay Brown recalls in Letters From Hamnavoe: 

The old wooden tub was taken out of the shed and set squarely on the flagstone floor. It was threequarters filled with water; maybe a kettleful of hot water was added to take the chill off. Then a poke bursting with apples was emptied into the tub, where they tossed and eddied and collided with each other - ruddy fragrant spheres .

 There were other seasonal treats too:

I have only a vague memory of what we did with the nuts - whether they were 'dooked' for too, or simply shared out - walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts thinly scattered among a huge profusion of monkey nuts.

There were one  or two variations; as when an apple coated with syrup was suspended from a rafter and the object of the exercise was to take a bite out of it. It was not so easy either, and meantime, cheeks and foreheads got stickier and stickier...

We can remember doing something similar as children, with pancakes spread with syrup or treacle, hanging from a string, which had to be eaten without the use of your hands. Yummy but messy!

The origins of such traditions are lost to time, but as GMB points out:

There must certainly be some reason rooted in old magic for these rituals. Of course the apples and the nuts marked the consummation of the fruitful year. Ahead stretched the gauntness and snows of winter.

It would be good to hear your memories of Hallowe'en traditions from previous generations - please feel free to add them as a comment below this post.

 image from http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/bobbing-for-apples.html

Remember, remember ...

Let's hope this morning's fine weather holds for tonight, when many folk across the country will be lighting bonfires, watching firework displays and enjoying such bonfire night favourites as baked tatties, treacle toffee and toasted marshmallows.

While in the days leading up to 5th November children in other parts of the country go looking for a 'penny for the Guy'  a related tradition, unique to Stromness, sees the town's children out at folks' doors asking for ' a penny for me pop'. An interesting exploration of this tradition can be found in Michael A. Lange's article Peeling the Pop  but for a first hand account we turned to Stromness lad George Mackay Brown, in Letters from Hamnavoe :

                  ' "'A penny to burn me pop" - Bless our hearts, we didn't for one moment know what the slogan meant. All we knew was that we had to pinch a turnip out of a farmer's field and take it home, about the 3rd of November. Then our fathers or our elder brother would sculpt the turnips with the kitchen carving knife. Buttons for eyes, broken matches for teeth, splashes of vermilion on cheeks and nose and a stick to carry it round with.'

By 1978, in Under Brinkie's Brae, GMB ' is glad to say that  nowadays children have, mostly, stopped saying the old ritual fiery words at the door. Instead they say, in their dewy voices, " A penny for me pop". ' For those of you still wondering at the significance of the 'fiery words' all will be made clear when we tell you that, said with an Orcadian accent ,'pop' becomes 'pope'. GMB wonders 'in what bigoted religious brain, sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, the phrase first took root', but it is clear that by the twentieth century the anti-catholic sentiment behind the tradition had been largely forgotten.

We wonder if any Stromness children will call by the library with their pops today? It has certainly happened in previous years, although the tradition is dwindling, as families  move away and those new to the town do not know of the old ways. We have a stash of small change ready, just in case, though we're not sure what the going rate is these days? When GMB was a boy in the 1920s he 'got a ha'penny ( an old half-penny)' and when he was being disturbed from his writing in 1978 by 'the sweet little turnip-bearing tyrants' two pence seemed 'an appropriate equivalent'.

In case you were wondering just what a pop looks like below is a picture of some Stromness bairns and their pops from 1991. As you can see the pop can come in any shape or form imaginable and I suspect the parents, or older siblings, who carve them have as much fun as the children!



Photograph copyright Keith Allardyce, taken from the wonderful book on Stromness 'Sea Haven' by Bryce Wilson and with a foreword by George Mackay Brown.



Hallowe'en

With carved pumpkins and "trick or treat" ing replacing the more traditional neepie lanterns and guizing, it is interesting to look back at some of the older beliefs and traditions surrounding the ancient festival of Hallowe'en.

Both Ernest Marwick (in The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland) and John Firth (in Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish), tell how Hallowe'en was the time when it was believe one could "pierce the shades of dim futurity", with most efforts in this direction apparently made by young women wishing to catch a glimpse of the identity of their future husband.

According to both Marwick and Firth, one particularly popular practice was the process Robert Burns called "winnan three wechts o' naething". The young woman would go out to the dark barn, leaving both doors open, and go through the motions of winnowing, with nothing in the sieve but scissors and a knife.  What she expected to see was an apparition of her future partner passing the open door.

Another equally unnerving practice described by both authors was the practice of throwing a ball of worsted yarn into the kiln used for drying grain while keeping hold of the end of the yarn. The woman would then unwind the ball whilst repeating "Wha hauds i' me clew's* end?", waiting and listening for the voice of her future husband to reply.

Both titles mentioned above are available to borrow from the library's collection of Orkney books, and make fascinating reading.

If any of our readers are brave enough to try either of these two experiments we would be very interested to hear the results - confidentiality assured of course regarding the identity of your phantom partner!


(* Clew = ball)

Spooky Stories

With the darker nights and Halloween on the way we thought it might be a good time for a display of  spooky stories.

With real life tales of unexplained happenings, including some from Orkney and Shetland, and a selection of fictional ghost stories, we have plenty of hair-raising reads to choose from.

But don't be surprised if your bedtime reading has you needing to leave the light on to go to sleep!