Yesterday the family didn’t come to dinner because they had a hallowe’en party to go to. In the early evening they popped round to say hello and, I think, to show off their costumes. Grandson Number Two (age 3) was wearing his dinosaur dressing gown, of which he is extremely proud. His big sister, Granddaughter Number Four (age 6) was most elegant in a black and grey dress, black tights and, the finishing touch, black cat ears - she was a cat, of course!
This morning Granddaughter Number One and Granddaughter Number Two both sent photos of themselves in Hallowe’en garb. Granddaughter Number One, who rarely goes anywhere has decorated her living room window with stick-on bats and spiders, despite a genuine phobia of real spiders and much to the consternation of her cat who tries to hunt the stick-ons. She was wearing a big, chunky, woolly jumper, knitted with a pattern of skulls and bones and spiders and other Hallowe’en stuff. Granddaughter Number Two will be swanning around the campus of York University in the fetching off-the-shoulder number I described the other day, complete with black lace gloves, black nail polish and black lipstick. This is all very Hallowe’en spooky as she is naturally extremely pale.
Nobody seems really to know where Hop-tu-Naa comes from although it does overlap to some extent with the Celtic custom of Samain. The term Hop-tu-Naa is speculated to come from the Gaelic phrase Shoh ta'n Oie, meaning "this is the night." However, there is possibly some Norse influence there. Those Norsemen went everywhere.
Some claim that trick or treating, which we tend to think of as an American import, was in fact related to Hop-tu-Naa and other Celtic-Nordic customs and was taken to America by Scots-Irish immigrants. The custom died out in the Scotland and Ireland but flourished in the USA. Now they seem to have re-exported it.
Hallowe’en was also called Hollantide Eve on the Isle of Man and back in the 1970s children went door to door showing off their carved turnip lanterns and singing a traditional Hollantide song:
This is old Hollantide night; Hop-tu-naa.
The moon shines bright; Trol-la-laa
Cock of the hens; Hop-tu-naa.
Supper of the heifer; Trol-la-laa
Which heifer shall we kill? Hop-tu-naa.
The little speckled heifer. Trol-la-laa
(The end of the song is reminiscent of trick-or-treating rhymes rehearsed by American children over the past 100 years.)
If you are going to give us anything, give it us soon,
Or we'll be away by the light of the moon.
So there you go! Lots of odd spooky stuff! And it seems it’s not just the Isle of Man. Here’s an article by Emma Beddington on the merits of swedes over pumpkins for making lanterns.
Interestingly swedes were originally called Swedish turnips but the name was shortened to swedes. Very similar as root vegetables, the main difference is colour and shape and the fact that turnips last longer in the fields while swedes are likes to rot more quickly. Who knew?
Further to my remarks on exercise yesterday, here is an article about “race walking”, that silly waynof walking as fast as possible, positivley waddling along without actually running. Apparently it’s less hard on joints that running and jogging.
And finally, news is out that maybe Rishi Sunak will go to Cop27 after all. It all depends on how preparations for his financial statement get on. Meanwhile there’s a story going round that Boris Johnson is going to going to Cop27. It’s uncertain whether he’s going as part of a government delegation (surely that’s unlikely) or if he’s been invited by the president of Cop27 or if he’s representing some independent organisation. It rather seems to me that he’s really going to stir things up a little.
He needs no wooden spoon.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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