Happy Hallowe'en !!!

8:33pm Wednesday 31st October 2007

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The year is zooming past and we find Hallowe'en once again upon us.....

What does Hallowe'en mean to you ?

In our house the kids dress up and wait for 'Trick or Treaters' to come and get their mits on sticky comestibles from our Hallowe'en bowl of power !

For us, the main deal is to come - we have a few friends round and have a spooky party on the nearest Saturday evening to Hallowe'en - this coming Saturday. We deck the house out with cobwebs (though there're usually plenty of real ones of those), snakes, rats and spiders. We play spooky music.....well, 'Thriller' and 'The Adams Family'. We play ghostly games.....that usually seem to result in me getting 'gunked' or wet.

All harmless fun. We're not Devil Worshippers, Pagans or Vampires. We just have a bit of fun. Life's too short to take everything seriously.

Fun is good.

Fun is healthy.

If you were in Hereford town centre today, you could have got free apples!!
Pesky Christian's muscling in on yet another bit of fun.... ;-)

If you were in Hereford a hundred or so years ago you could have a look into the future !

If a girl go into the garden on this night, and cut a cabbage, as the clock strikes twelve, the wraith of her future husband will then appear

Or so the superstitious believed according to Ella Mary Leather in 'The Folklore of Herefordshire' published by Lapridge Publications.

Or, more ghoulishly, you could find out if any member of your family will die in the coming year by taking an ivy leaf for each member of your family and placing it in a bowl of water. The leaves (marked in some way to identify which leaf represented which member of the family) were left in the bowl all night. Come morning time, if any of the leaves had a coffin marked on them then the corresponding family members would die soon. This again is from Ella Mary Leather's book.

Interesting, eh ?

Well, total poppycock I say, but at least it has entertainment value now.

I intend to draw on more info from 'The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire' in the future. I find it incredibly entertaining and really can't believe just what some people believed.....

To end on a serious note, when you've finished with your 'Jack O' Lanterns', please dispose of your pumpkins responsibly.

TTFN

Rob

PS Sally, Fred Dibnah was SO much more than a steam buff....he was a TV celebrity, steeplejack, alround engineering enthusiast and a darn nice bloke. Catch some of his shows on UKTV television channels....