Continuity

By Richard Watson

How did our North West elders celebrate and mark the principle seasonal changes in their year - those from light to dark and dark to light. We start at Halloween, the current survivor of several
customs.

Formerly known as All Souls Night, or All Hallows Eve, preceding All Souls Day on November 1st (the Kalends of Winter), it  had become a Christian festival by the efforts of the Celtic Church,  common with Christians everywhere, attached the main celebrations of the local populace to their own ends. The time of the year that this festival took place was the Autumn Equinox. This was still known to many folk in Amounderness as Teanla Night, and as such almost into living memory. The encircling fells of our area on Teanla Night were bright with the flames of many a bonfire, the makers of which would see the answering conflagrations on the coastal plain. The menfolk carried flaming bundles on pitchforks, whilst dancing widdershins (west to east) around the fire, the Christian object of which was to succour their friends whose souls may be in Purgatory. There were fields in Weeton and Poulton, and elsewhere, where the celebrations took place, known by the name of Purgatory.

It was customary at these events to eat parkin, that lusciously dark gooey cake that has had its place on the bakers' shelves taken nowadays by a pale type of gingerbread. Parkin's other name was Soulmass cake. This very ancient tradition has now been diverted to the 5th November each year.

But what about the other equinox ? Until into the early part of the nineteenth century the kalends of May (May 1st) was celebrated by bonfires. Known as Beltane fires, these were an ancient festival welcoming Spring and visible fertility, a celebration of light over darkness taken by the Celtic Church to be the time of Pentecost (or Whitsuntide if you prefer) and as such still celebrated, but without the bonfires of course. It is interesting to note that the Irish Gaelic name for the month of May is Bealtaine.

Having a fixed Pentecost was the result of the Celtic Church adhering to a fixed Easter which had survived elsewhere only until 453 A.D. The Celtic quarter-days take May 15th as Pentecost, probably as a result of the New Calendar of 1753, but the traditional use of these divisions of the year by the farming community of the North West have in one instance resulted in May 1st being still recognised. Land on the coastal plain is entered into at Candlemas but the house and buildings cannot be possessed until May Day (the original Pentecost).

The Celtic quarter days are Candlemas, February 2nd (the Purification of the Virgin Mary), Pentecost, May 15th (Whitsuntide), Lamas, August 1st (Loaf Mass) and Martinmas, November 11th (St. Martin in Winter shifted to this date from November 1st in the distant past).

All the above feasts were pagan Celtic celebrations originally.

The rest of England uses Lady Day, March 25th (Annunciation of the Virgin Mary), Midsummer Day, June 24th (St.John the Baptist),Michaelmas, September 29th (St. Michael and All Angels) and Christmas Day December 25th.

All the foregoing seems to be a fair indication that the basic culture in Over Wyre and the Fylde stretches back over the centuries  and in doing so transcends the theories that we were a largely uninhabited wasteland.