Boyne Valley Activities: Halloween

Halloween, or Samhain (Summers End) in the Boyne Valley was originally celebrated as the end of the old year and like a modern day New Years Eve, it is a bit difficult to decide which is the best party to go to on the night. While the urban areas of the Boyne Valley see the continuation of old rituals such as fires, guising (costumes), divination (apple bobbing) and mischief (teenagers roaming the streets), the rural areas are just as busy.

This is not a new phenomenon. Ireland was a rural landscape up until the 20th century and this time of the year is important for country people. The animals would be brought in from the fields. Slaughtering would take place and feasts would be had to fatten up for the dark cold nights coming. This was the last chance to gather fruits or grains before the frosts killed them and the land descended into darkness. Travelling workers returned to their own families. Fires were lit. And of course, the fairy folk were able to slip through the veil between the worlds without the usual spiritual immigration laws that operated the rest of the year.

Up at Loughcrew, the passage mound at Carnbane L has an unusual standing stone within it which is illuminated by the sunrise at Samhain. Cairn U is also supposed to be aligned with the sunrise. The Mound of the Hostages on Tara is another landscape marker aligned with the Samhain sunrise and like Carnbane L, there was a standing stone at its entrance up until the 19th century.

The Mound of the Hostages dates from the neolithic and there is a lot of archaeological evidence for a ring of fire pits around it. The earliest historical records from here mention the lighting of the fires at Tara to signal the start of the New Year. Everyone waited for the signal from Tara, but the high king at Tara got his signal from the druids at Tlachtga, which goes by the name of the Hill of Ward today. While Tara was seen as the political capital, Tlachtga was seen as the spiritual centre for the druids and it is there where the biggest party was last night.

Flame torches and flourescent lights circled this unusual multi-ditched site while a procession made its way up from the fair green in Athboy. Modern day druids rubbed shoulders with Wiccan practitioners and children in masks and elderly farmers out to mark All Hallows Eve, the christian version. There was even a film crew from Korea and when the ritual pageant of the story of Tlachtga started I kept expecting Halloween "Gangnam" style but it was a classy affair, about Tlachtgas search for knowledge and the idea of sharing that knowledge rather than using it to control others. Nice sentiments, followed by tea and crisps.

This mix of different styles and old tales is typical of Tlachtga. Ongoing remote sensing surveys on the hill are revealing that there is a lot more going on under the ground than we can see. There are only three sites like Tlachtga in Ireland and one of them is the Rath of the Synods in Tara so there definitely seems to be a link with the royal site here. Whatever it was originally used for (nobody even knows if the hill of Ward is actually Tlachtga!), it still draws a crowd on Halloween.