Ancient Halloween traditions celebrated in Co Meath

 

As darkness fell this evening, Athboy in Co Meath lit up to celebrate Sámhain.

By Laura Hogan

As darkness fell this evening, Athboy in Co Meath lit up to celebrate Sámhain.

“An Lasadh Suas” is the closing ceremony this Halloween night, on the fifth day of the Púca Festival in Co Meath.

A ceremonial fire was lit at Tlachtga, or the Hill of Ward in Athboy, and a procession lead to the Fair Green in the town.

Tlachtga is said to be the location where the ancient Irish lit a fire from which all fires in Ireland were rekindled.

In the Fair Green, four fire sculptures representing the hills of Tara, Loughcrew, Tailteann and Uisneach were set alight.

For the last number of days, people have been leaving messages for their ancestors in the fire installation “An Lasadh Suas”, which also went up in flames during the ceremony this evening.

Storytelling and sean nós singing provided the soundtrack for the cermony in Athboy, where people gathered from around 5pm.

Performances from Kíla and the Pyro Collective closed the event, which has attracted thousands of visitors over the five day event.

Fáilte Ireland says the festival was devised to promote Ireland as the “home of Halloween”, and attract tourism at a time of the year that might be quiet otherwise.

The origins of the Halloween we know today are rooted here in Ireland and the ancient Celtic tradition of Sámhain.

Meath is among the places said to be home of some these, marking the end of Harvest Season and the start of Winter.

The tour of the Porchie Fields

Earlier today in Trim, “mortal guide” Cynthia Simonet guided visitors through this world and an “other world”, with help from her “immortal” colleagues.

The tour in the Porchie Fields boasts views over Trim Castle and the River Boyne, as people learned about the tradition of wearing costumes and masks to protect themselves from the magical creatures who were said to enter this world on Sámhain.

Kilene Cass from Florida in the United States was among those on the walking tour overlooking Trim today. She said she had done some research on Sámhain before coming here.

Erin Tweed from Colorado had been on holidays in Ireland already, but extended her trip to celebrate Halloween and attend the Púca Festival.

In Athboy, a “harvest market” was in full swing. Among the activities, an axe throwing stand.

Benny Ennis said that while we don’t know if our ancestors participated in Axe throwing, there would have been a tradition of champions showing off their strength and skill at large gatherings.

Just after 6pm this evening, the ceremonial fire arrived at the Fair Green in Athboy, before a crowd of hundreds witnessed “An Lasadh Suas”.

Last year, the Púca festival generated €3 million for the local economy and organisers say that that figure has already been surpassed.

Source: Ancient Halloween traditions celebrated in Co Meath

From Enys Men to The Witch: What’s behind cinema’s folk horror boom?

Eloise Hendy delves into the genre that turns the pastoral idyll into a place of terror, and asks what’s behind this obsession with the natural world, magic cults, standing stones and feminine powers

By Eloise Hendy

In Enys Men – the much-anticipated new film written and directed by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin, whose last feature, Bait (2019), earned him a Bafta for Outstanding Debut – a woman in walking boots, jeans, and a translucent red anorak trudges across gorsy moorland towards a cliff face. She clambers down, perches on a rocky outcrop, and stares intently at a few white flowers as they sway in the wind, high above clamorous waves below.

Every day she studies these flowers. Then, every day she drops a rock into an abandoned tin mine’s inky depths, and stands listening for a distant thud. She returns to an isolated, ivy-covered cottage. A standing stone sticks out of the landscape like an ancient dagger-head. The woman pulls the cord of a power generator, makes a pot of tea, listens to the scratchy, indistinct noises of a radio communication device, and, in a logbook, records the date – April 1973 – and the words ‘”no change”. At bedtime, by candlelight, she reads an environmental manifesto titled Blueprint for Survival. Snatched glimpses of the cover reveal a quote in red: “Nightmarishly convincing… After reading it nothing quite seems the same any more.”

This phrase goes to the heart of this strange, spectral work of cinema. Even calling it a film feels wrong somehow; it feels more like a fever dream, or hallucination. For, almost as soon as the unnamed wildlife volunteer’s routine comes into focus for the viewer, it starts to fracture. Lichen blooms on her flowers and on a scar that stretches across her abdomen. Grubby-faced men holding pickaxes stare at her from the mineshaft; sailors lost at sea grin and drip outside her front door; a girl in white bell bottoms stands on the outhouse roof. Steadily, the whole far-flung landscape begins to teem with apparitions. They are both convincing and nightmarish; nothing quite seems the same any more. Is the volunteer losing her mind? Or merging with an ancient Cornish terrain – one riddled with myth and old scars, like her lichen-sprouting stomach?

In a statement accompanying Enys Men (which is pronounced Ennis Main, and means “stone island” in Cornish), Jenkin suggests his starting point for the film was a single question: “What if the landscape was not only alive, but sentient?” Long fascinated by Cornish standing stones and their accompanying legends – one of which imagines the rocks as the petrified remains of a group of young girls, punished for dancing – Jenkin found himself imagining what these stones and remote moorlands might get up to under cover of darkness. “Almost inevitably, considering the setting,” he writes, “the idea was inclined towards folk horror.”

Jenkin is far from the only contemporary filmmaker inclined in this direction. Indeed, for at least a decade we have been in the midst of a magnificent folk horror revival. But why has this strange subgenre of standing stones and spectral presences captured the imagination of filmmakers and audiences in the UK and beyond? What does the folk horror boom say about our contemporary fears?

The term itself only went mainstream in 2010, when Mark Gatiss used it in the BBC documentary series The History of Horror to describe three British films now known as the Unholy Trinity: Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). It is certainly no coincidence then that Enys Men is set in 1973, as, making the film, it was precisely these cinematic roots Jenkin wanted to rummage in. “For me,” Jenkin writes, “folk horror has very English connotations. The stripping away of a pastoral layer of Merrie England to reveal an earlier Celtic and pagan past full of perceived brutality, deviance and threat.” Yet, since Gatiss first invoked the genre, cinemagoers on both sides of the Atlantic have been offered up Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) and A Field in England (2013), Paul Wright’s For Those in Peril (2013), James Crow’s Curse of The Witching Tree (2015), Robert Egger’s The VVitch (subtitled “A New England Folktale”), Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Scott Cooper’s Antlers (2021) and, most recently, Alex Garland’s Men (2022). All present nightmarish visions of a deviant, occult and cult-addled countryside. And that is far from an exhaustive list. Continue reading

Barde’s “Fanny Power”

1977 – Barde (Porte Parole/Direction/Polydor) 10006

Friend of THE HOBBLEDEHOY Chris Crilly (aka Fiddler72 ) led this 70s-era Montreal-based Celtic group BARDE. The band released two LP’s at the time and, according to Chris “had considerable critical, if not overwhelmingly commercial, success in North America and elsewhere. ” We can understand why after listening to this lovely treatment of O’Carolan’s Fanny Power.

Turlough O’Carolan, (1670 – 25 March 1738) was a blind Celtic harper, composer and singer in Ireland whose great fame is due to his gift for melodic composition. Although not a composer in the classical sense, Carolan is considered by many to be Ireland’s national composer. Some of Carolan’s own compositions show influences of the style of continental classical music, whereas others such as Carolan’s Farewell to Music reflect a much older style of “Gaelic Harping”.

Wikipedia

RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards shortlist announced

Lankum’s Radie Peat performs at the 2018 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards

The shortlist has been announced for the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, taking place in Vicar Street on October 24th.

This year’s nominees cover the entire Irish folk spectrum, with talents like Lisa O’Neill (nominated in four categories, including Best Folk Album and a pair of nominations for Best Original Folk Track), Junior Brother, Saint Sister and Ye Vagabonds nominated alongside veteran players like Dervish, Gerry O’Beirne, Cormac Begley and Martin Hayes. You can read the shortlist in full below.

Additionally, it has been announced that Irish folk legend Moya Brennan, the vocalist with Clannad, will achieve this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards 2019 – The Shortlist

Best Traditional Folk Track

Bacach Shíol Andaí -– Ye Vagabonds

The Factory Girl – Lisa O’Neill

The Foggy Dew – Ye Vagabonds

The Granemore Hare – Daoirí Farrell

Póirste Béil – Inni K

Best Original Folk Track

All Down the Day – Gerry O’Beirne

Áthas – The Gloaming

Blackbird – Lisa O’Neill

Down in the Glen – Karan Casey

The River Holds Its Breath – Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Rock The Machine – Lisa O’Neill

Best Emerging Folk Act

Anna Mieke

Alfi

Lemoncello

Junior Brother

Saint Sister

Best Folk Instrumentalist

Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh

Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Cormac Begley

Martin Hayes

Zoe Conway

Best Folk Singer

Daoiri Farrell

Iarla Ó’Lionáird

Lisa O’Neill

Radie Peat

Ríoghnach Connolly

Best Folk Album

A Lifetime of Happiness – Daoirí Farrell

Heard a Long Gone Song – Lisa O’Neill

The Hare’s Lament – Ye Vagabonds

The River Holds its Breath – Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Pull the Right Rope – Junior Brother

The Gloaming 3 – The Gloaming

Best Folk Group

Dervish

Flook

Saint Sister

The Gloaming

Ye Vagabonds

Source: RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards shortlist announced