Halloween, Melding the Ancient and the Modern

Since it is Halloween, I thought I might try to write about how we ended up with a holiday where children run around door to door in costumes getting candy.  In truth just re-hashing the readily available historical accounts was not all that interesting so I am presenting something a little different.Halloween originated with Celts in the British Isles as Samhain (pronounced “Sah-win”), a Gaelic word for “summer’s end.”  Historians trace the tradition back about 2,000 years as an important time in the year when livestock are brought down from wild meadows and other preparations are made for winter.  For Neolithic farmers, keeping track of the time of the year was essential for survival.  The crops had to be planted in time to be harvested.  Cattle, goats and sheep needed to be released into more distant, less agriculturally useful fields in the spring so as to not ravage crops but had to be brought back before winter cold killed them.  With no form of writing, the ancients carefully tracked and marked the position of the sunrise and sunset on the solstices and other key dates of agricultural management.  It was so important, some early Britons created permanent calendars like Stonehenge to mark the seasons.

We know paleolithic humans buried their dead with foods, tools and personal effects which indicated they probably had some concept of an afterlife.  These beliefs included attached spiritual force to animals and even inanimate objects (rocks, trees, wheat, barley, the earth, mountains, rain, sun, lightning thunder, the moon, etc.).  We have 30,000 year old cave drawings at Altamira and Lascaux with amazingly detailed drawings of animals which hint at the spiritual importance of animals.

As humans began asserting control over nature about 12,000 years ago, they recognized a connection between the seasons and the human condition.  Like points on a compass, Celtic seasonal celebrations each had a separate significance dividing the year into four distinct seasons.  Each season represented a different time in an agricultural calendar: planting, growth, harvest, and death.  Closely observing the seasons, our ancestors probably quickly saw parallels in our own cycle of life: birth, adulthood, old age and death.

The beliefs about Samhain probably evolved as well from merely an important date on the farming calendar to something endowed with its own spiritual significance.  When the Romans began chronicling Celtic beliefs 2,000 years ago, Samhain was the time when those who had died in the last year entered the afterlife and where the barriers between the spiritual world were lower meaning spirits and ghosts had greater access to the material world.
Thus, the 2,000 year old tradition of Samhain noted by Roman observers probably originated much earlier and evolved over time with succeeding generations.  That brings me to the Old English ballad of John Barleycorn.  Anytime I see words like Celtic, Gaelic, etc., it is not long before “John Barleycorn Must Die” the 1970 adaption by English rock band Traffic starts playing in my head.  Scots merchant George Bannatyne first published the lyrics of John Barleycorn in 1568 in a collection of older traditional songs and poems.  John Barleycorn is undoubtedly much older, passed down through the generations by oral tradition.  Like Samhain the lyrics has changed through the years.

In essence, the lyrics describe how barley is grown, harvested and refined into an alcoholic beverage which is a microcosm of the four seasons of birth, growth, maturity and death.  The lyrics are pretty clear:

Spring: They’ve let him lie for a very long time, ’til the rains from heaven did fall

And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all

————–

Summer: And little Sir John’s grown a long long beard and so become a man

————–

Fall (Samhain): They’ve hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee They’ve rolled him and tied him by the way, serving him most barbarously

They’ve hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone

And the miller he has served him worse than that For he’s ground him between two stones

————–

Winter: And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass

And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last

Contained within the cycle of life is a belief in the afterlife.  Barley is personified as a sort of ancient Michael Myers (see the movie Halloween) who like Myers seemingly cannot be killed.  The spirit of John Barleycorn survives even as his corporeal body is gradually de-graded and eventually consumed.

Interestingly, there are a few lines that do not seem to relate strictly to the life cycle of barley:

They’ve wheeled him around and around a field ’til they came onto a pond And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn

Farmers who have just harvested and bundled their barley would not need to “wheel” it “around and around a field.”  This line may be a reference to a much older Celtic tradition, the Corn King.  In one of the more barbaric rituals of the Celts, a member of a society was selected by lots to be the Corn King.  He would be honored and act as leader of the community for a year.  At the end of his term, the Corn King would be killed and his body and blood were spread over fields as a ritual sacrifice for a good harvest in the next year.

Christians would have easily recognized the story of a character who grows up, suffers a painful death and is resurrected.  Christians often adapted pagan stories and rituals to their own practices and beliefs.  Thus, John Barleycorn becomes an analogy to Christ.  Famed Scots poet Robert Burns went so far as to open his version of the song with changing the opening from “There were three men came out of the west” to  “There was three kings come out of the east.”  Burns modification is an obvious reference the New Testament story of the birth of Christ.  The lifecycle of John Barleycorn including our consumption of his spirit most certainly appealed to Christians as analogous to the importance of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

We can therefore see how traditions are adapted and modified over time with some parts lost or modified in combination with very old remnants.  Burns’ modern version included a reference to an ancient pagan ritual, the Corn King with more modern descriptions of agricultural processes combined with recent Christian detail.

I hope that the contrast of Samhain with John Barleycorn and pagan and Christian beliefs offer a little different perspective about Halloween.  So as you take your children around the neighborhood this evening, maybe you will think about the ancient origins of the tradition and how elements of our ancient past still live in modern culture.

Also, take a moment to listen to Steve Winwood’s version of “John Barleycorn Must Die.”  Winwood is a true virtuoso and if you don’t like his performance, you might be dead on the inside (Ha Ha get it? Michael Myers? Halloween?)

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