Samhain: The Beginning of Winter in Irish Tradition
On Samhain night, King Ailill and Queen Medb gather at Cruachan when a challenge is issued: someone must place a band around a nearby corpse’s ankle. Nera accepts, only to find himself drawn into a strange encounter that leads him into the Otherworld. The story, told in Echtra Nerai, is one of several medieval Irish tales set at Samhain, the festival associated with the beginning of winter around 1 November.
In Scotland, the festival was known as Samhuinn, while on the Isle of Man it was called Sauin. Both names are closely related to the Irish Samhain. Wales had Calan Gaeaf, marking the first day of winter, with related names surviving in Cornwall and Brittany. Each region developed its own customs, some of which are still practised today.
Samhain in the Irish Calendar
For the early Irish, Samhain marked the beginning of winter, around 1 November. Beltaine, six months later at the beginning of May, marked the return of summer. The medieval tale Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer) names both festivals, along with Imbolc in February and Lughnasadh in August, when describing the year’s divisions (Meyer, 1890). The Old Irish text records Samhain as Samain, with Samhain being the modern Irish spelling.
By Samhain, cattle that had spent the summer grazing away from settlements were brought back for the winter. The harvest was largely finished, and the food gathered during the warmer months would have to sustain households through the colder season.
Today, Samhain is commonly associated with 31 October, although the traditional festival date is 1 November. The preceding evening, Oíche Shamhna, remains an important part of the celebration and is the Irish name for Halloween.
Samhain and the Great Assemblies
In Serglige Con Culainn (The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn), the Ulstermen assemble for a seven-day festival: three days before Samhain, Samhain itself, and three days afterwards. The gathering includes entertainment, games and feasting before the story turns towards Cú Chulainn’s encounter with supernatural women (Dillon, 1953).
A more elaborate account of a royal assembly appears in Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (The History of Ireland), written in the seventeenth century. Keating describes the Feis Temro, the Feast of Tara, as a gathering held every third year. Kings, nobles and learned men assembled to settle questions of law, confirm historical records and establish the proper seating arrangements at royal feasts (Keating, c. 1634).
Keating gives a detailed description of the banquet hall. Nobles’ and warriors’ shields hung above their seats, allowing each person to be recognised by rank. Territorial lords occupied one side of the hall, military leaders the other, with learned men seated at the upper end.
Keating wrote long after the period he describes, drawing on medieval traditions and his understanding of Ireland’s past. His account preserves a developed picture of Tara’s royal assembly, but its ceremonies cannot be accepted as a reliable description of what took place in pre-Christian Ireland.
Samhain and the Otherworld
Nera’s story takes place at Cruachan, the royal centre of Connacht. Having accepted Ailill’s challenge, Nera approaches the hanging corpse and fastens the band around its ankle.
The corpse speaks to him and asks for water. Nera carries it to several houses until it is satisfied. He subsequently witnesses what appears to be the destruction of Cruachan and follows supernatural beings into the mound beneath the royal site.
Inside the síd, an Otherworld dwelling, Nera meets a woman who explains what has happened and warns him about what is to come. When he returns to the human world, time has not passed as he experienced it (Meyer, 1889).
Another tale, Serglige Con Culainn, begins during the Ulstermen’s Samhain gathering. Cú Chulainn encounters two supernatural women who strike him with rods, leaving him afflicted by a mysterious illness. Later, he encounters Fand, a woman of the Otherworld, and a conflict among supernatural beings (Dillon, 1953).
Both stories have contributed to the modern understanding of Samhain as a time when encounters between the human world and the Otherworld become more likely.
The familiar expression that ‘the veil between the worlds is thin’ is modern terminology. Medieval stories describe specific encounters and journeys, without presenting a general belief in a veil that thins on Samhain night.
Samhain and the Dead
Halloween traditions recorded in Ireland include beliefs that the souls of deceased relatives might return to their former homes. Food was sometimes left for them, and households took precautions against less welcome supernatural visitors.
Other traditions concerned the aos sí, the supernatural inhabitants associated with fairy mounds and other ancient landscape features. Some locations were considered dangerous after dark, and people might avoid certain paths, trees, or mounds on Halloween night.
In parts of Ireland, people placed stick or straw crosses above doors at Samhain to protect their homes from unwanted supernatural visitors. Examples of these protective customs survive in the National Museum of Ireland’s folklore collections (National Museum of Ireland, n.d.).
Fire, Feasting and Divination
Bonfires feature in Irish and Scottish Halloween customs, and Samhain is frequently described in modern writing as an ancient fire festival.
One place associated with such traditions is Tlachtga, the Hill of Ward near Athboy in County Meath. Later accounts connect the site with a great fire lit at Samhain, from which other fires were supposedly kindled.
The claim that every household in ancient Ireland extinguished its hearth and relit it from a single sacred Samhain fire is difficult to substantiate. Much of the elaborate ritual detail found in popular descriptions comes from later antiquarian writing.
At Halloween, people played games with apples and nuts to try to find out who they might marry. In Ireland, another popular tradition was hiding small objects inside a fruit loaf called báirín breac, or barmbrack. Each object was supposed to tell you something about your future. Finding a ring in your slice meant you would get married.
Other customs involved choosing vegetables while blindfolded, interpreting the shapes of apple peelings or watching how nuts behaved when placed in a fire.
Samhain and the Origins of Halloween
Halloween takes its English name from All Hallows’ Eve, the evening before All Saints’ Day on 1 November. All Souls’ Day follows on 2 November, providing another Christian occasion to remember the dead.
Irish and Scottish Halloween customs included disguises, visiting neighbouring houses, games and divination. These traditions continued alongside the season’s Christian commemorations.
During the nineteenth century, Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their Halloween customs to North America. One was carving frightening faces into turnips and placing candles inside. Pumpkins grew widely in North America and were much easier to hollow out, so they eventually became the preferred choice.
In Scotland, children dressed up and went from house to house, singing songs or telling jokes in exchange for food. This was known as guising. Similar customs existed elsewhere in Europe, but the trick-or-treating we know today developed mainly in North America during the twentieth century.
The relationship between Samhain and the Christian calendar has sometimes been presented as a deliberate attempt by the Church to replace a Pagan festival. All Saints’ Day has its own history, and the Church later moved its date within the Christian calendar. Surviving evidence does not show that adopting 1 November was specifically intended to suppress Samhain (English Heritage, n.d.).
Samhain Beyond Ireland
The Gaelic names for Samhain survive beyond Ireland, particularly in Scotland and the Isle of Man. Elsewhere in the Celtic-speaking world, the beginning of November has its own names and associated customs.
Scotland: Samhuinn
In Scottish Gaelic, Samhuinn corresponds to Irish Samhain.
In parts of Scotland, Halloween bonfires were known as samhnagan. Young people gathered around the fires, while hollowed-out turnips, known as tumshies, were carved with frightening faces and fitted with candles. People could carry the lanterns outdoors or place them where their faces were visible after dark.
Guising was another familiar custom. Children visited neighbouring houses in disguise, often performing songs, jokes or recitations in exchange for food or treats.
Scottish divination traditions included burning nuts to predict a relationship’s future and pulling kale stalks from the ground to discover the supposed characteristics of a future spouse. Robert Burns recorded several such customs in his 1786 poem Halloween.
Another Scottish Gaelic custom involved fuarag, a mixture of oats and cream into which small objects might be placed to predict marriage, wealth or other future circumstances (Rodger, 2023).
The Isle of Man: Sauin
Manx Gaelic preserves the name Sauin, corresponding to Irish Samhain and Scottish Gaelic Samhuinn. The preceding evening was known as Oie Houney, while Hop-tu-Naa became the familiar name of the island’s Halloween celebration.
In the nineteenth century, the Welsh scholar John Rhys recorded Manx traditions in which Sauin was regarded as the beginning of the year. He also described a custom of visiting houses and singing verses. One older rhyme referred to New Year’s night, while another used the Manx expression Oie Houney (Rhys, 1891).
The celebration survives as Hop-tu-Naa. Children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out turnips, known locally as moots, and visit houses singing traditional songs. The practice has much in common with Scottish guising, although its songs and name belong to the Manx tradition.
On the Isle of Man, Hollantide was once celebrated in mid-November. John Rhys (1891) recorded that the Manx continued to observe the festival according to the old Julian calendar, even after the Gregorian calendar had been adopted. This placed their celebrations nearly two weeks later than Halloween on 31 October.
Wales: Calan Gaeaf
In Wales, 1 November is known as Calan Gaeaf, meaning the first day of winter. The preceding evening is Nos Galan Gaeaf.
Welsh folklore preserves accounts of bonfires, divination and supernatural dangers associated with the occasion. One of the best-known figures is Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta, the tailless black sow. In some traditions, children were warned to return home before the bonfire died down or risk being caught by the creature.
Another figure, Ladi Wen, the White Lady, appears in Welsh accounts of supernatural activity on the night. Ghosts were sometimes believed to gather at crossroads, stiles and other places where travellers might encounter them (Jenkins, 2020).
Cornwall and Brittany
Cornish Kalan Gwav and Breton Kala-Goañv are related to Welsh Calan Gaeaf. The words for winter, Cornish gwav, Breton goañv and Welsh gaeaf, share a linguistic origin.
The Cornish name survives alongside the English term Allantide, traditionally associated with the end of October and beginning of November. Cornish seasonal vocabulary is documented in Henry Jenner’s A Handbook of the Cornish Language, published in 1904, which records gwav as the word for winter (Jenner, 1904).
In Brittany, Kala-Goañv refers to the beginning of November. The historical Breton dictionary Devri records forms of the name from the eighteenth century onward, including its use for the start of November and for seasonal agricultural activities (Devri, n.d.).
The shared vocabulary provides a linguistic link between the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton calendars, though it does not show that all three regions once celebrated the same religious festival.
Was Samhain the Celtic New Year?
Samhain is often described as the Celtic New Year, although whether it was actually regarded as the beginning of the year in pre-Christian Ireland is far from certain.
One piece of evidence that sometimes comes up in this discussion is the Coligny calendar, a bronze calendar discovered in France in 1897. Dating from the Roman period, it records the months in Gaulish, an ancient Celtic language. Among them are two months called Samonios and Giamonios.
The name Samonios has naturally attracted attention because of its similarity to the Irish Samhain. But we don’t know exactly what the name meant, or how the Gaulish calendar relates to the seasonal divisions used in Ireland. Nothing in the surviving calendar tells us that Samonios was the same as Samhain, or that the people of Gaul celebrated a festival corresponding to Samhain on 1 November.
Much of the popular idea of Samhain as the Celtic New Year can be traced back to nineteenth-century scholars, particularly John Rhys and James Frazer. Ronald Hutton revisited the question in his 2024 article, The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead, and concluded that we simply don’t have enough evidence to say whether the ancient Irish considered Samhain the start of their year.
It’s certainly possible that they did. Samhain marked an important seasonal turning point, with winter beginning and the agricultural year drawing to a close. It makes sense that such a moment would be associated with a new beginning. But that is an interpretation, and for now we can’t say with any certainty that it reflects how people in pre-Christian Ireland understood the
Samhain in Contemporary Paganism
Samhain is one of the eight festivals commonly observed in the modern Pagan Wheel of the Year. It falls between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice and is often seen as the start of a new spiritual year.
Remembrance of the dead is central to many contemporary observances. A photograph of a deceased relative might be placed beside a candle, or a portion of a meal set aside in their memory. Other practitioners spend the occasion considering what has ended during the year and what they wish to leave behind as winter approaches.
Medieval Irish stories also inspire some modern Pagan celebrations of Samhain. The tale of Nera at Cruachan, for example, offers a particularly vivid account of an encounter with the Otherworld on Samhain night.
Samhain Through the Centuries
Samhain’s association with the beginning of winter has endured in Gaelic tradition. Medieval Irish storytellers placed royal gatherings and encounters with the Otherworld at this time of year, while later generations developed the Halloween customs recorded in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.
References
Devri (n.d.) ‘Kala-goañv’. Devri: Dictionnaire diachronique du breton. https://devri.bzh/dictionnaire/k/kala-goanv
Dillon, M. (ed.) (1953) Serglige Con Culainn. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Electronic edition, CELT, University College Cork. https://celt.ucc.ie/published/G301015.html
English Heritage (n.d.) ‘A brief history of Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day with Dr Michael Carter’. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/halloween-saints-souls
Hutton, R. (2024) ‘The Celtic New Year and Feast of the Dead’, Folklore, 135(1), pp. 69–86. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2282282
Jenkins, L. (2020) ‘Halloween Traditions’. Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, 27 October. https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions
Jenner, H. (1904) A Handbook of the Cornish Language. London: David Nutt. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26192
Keating, G. (c. 1634) Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (The History of Ireland), Part 49. English translation, CELT, University College Cork. https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T100054/text049.html
Meyer, K. (ed. and trans.) (1889) ‘The Adventures of Nera’, Revue Celtique, 10, pp. 212–228. https://archive.org/details/revueceltique10pari
Meyer, K. (ed. and trans.) (1890) ‘The Oldest Version of Tochmarc Emire’, Revue Celtique, 11, pp. 433–457. Electronic text, University College Cork. https://iso.ucc.ie/Tochmarc-emire/Tochmarc-emire-text.html
National Museum of Ireland (n.d.) ‘Traditions and customs of Halloween / Samhain’. National Folklife Collection. https://source.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Folklife-Collections/Folklife-Collections-List-%281%29/Religion-and-Calendar-Customs/Hallowe-en-Samhain
National Museum of Ireland (2023) ‘Ghost turnips, the púca, fortune-telling and evil abductions: how our ancestors inspire our Halloween celebrations today’. https://source.museum.ie/en-IE/News/2023/Ghost-turnips%2C-pucas%2C-fortune-telling-and-evil-abd
Rhys, J. (1891) ‘Manx Folk-Lore and Superstitions’, Folk-Lore, 2. Online transcription. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Folk-Lore/Volume_2/Manx_Folk-Lore_and_Superstitions
Rodger, L. (2023) ‘Samhainn and the Scottish traditions of Hallowe’en’. Historic Environment Scotland, 27 October. https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2023/10/samhainn-and-the-scottish-traditions-of-halloween/Sub heading