The Shadow of Samhain: The Headless Horseman

What's that you say? It's the second week of November? Pshaw! The Shadow of Samhain lives on in The Vault, with a look at the enduring legend of the Headless Horseman, from Jeanette Laredo of Monsterland...

“Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that [the horseman] was headless!—but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!”

--Washington Irving “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Mention the Headless Horseman and most people will recall a larger than life specter that is a staple of Halloween lore and stories told around the campfire. A Hessian decapitated by a cannon ball during the revolutionary war, he wanders the back roads of town called Sleepy Hollow, searching for his head and spiriting away any traveler unlucky enough to cross his path.

The figure of the ghostly Hessian comes to life in Washington Irving’s 1858 spine-tingling tale of an awkward schoolmaster who encounters the supernatural. In it, the horseman pursues Ichabod down dark country lanes, while Ichabod comically tries to escape on his trusty steed, Gunpowder. The chase culminates at the town bridge, where Ichabod believes once he has crossed it he will be safe from the violent spectre, but this part of the old wives’ tale fails Ichabod, as the horseman flings his head across the bridge and knocks Ichabod from his saddle.

The next morning no trace of the schoolmaster can be found, save for his hat and next to it a shattered pumpkin.

While Irving may have given us the most recognizable version of the headless horseman according to Dutch lore, the galloping Hessian can be traced back to other instances of the headless rider in myth and folklore.

In Northern India there is a creature called the “Dund” that rides with his head tied to the pommel of his saddle. He appears before the doorways of villagers, a sword in each hand, and calls the name of the inhabitant within. If the owner of the name answers, he is sure to die from fever or some other malady.

This creature, like the famed Hessian of Irving’s story, has its own fabled backstory. In life his name was Kharak Singh and he continued to fight for his lord after being beheaded in a vicious battle. In order to defeat the spirit, local lore says he must be thrown over a piece of dirty cloth.

The Dund also has an Irish cousin, the Dullahan, an unseelie spirit that prowls the countryside. He is a figure of death, and in addition to holding his disembodied head under his arm, he carries with him other macabre trappings, including a whip made of a human spine. Wherever he stops, someone is due to die and he will call out his name. Like the victims of the Dund, the poor soul will drop dead on the spot. There is no way to stop this dark spirit except for gold. Apparently the Dullahan is afraid of the precious metal and very small amounts can drive it away.

The folkloric versions of the headless horseman give rise to other, more literary versions of the ghost in the 14th century tale of “Sir Gawain and the Green Night” and “Der Wilde Jager,” in 1777 by the German poet, G.A. Burger.

In “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” the massive figure of the Green Knight intrudes on King Arthur’s court during New Year’s with a challenge for the new King. He demands to receive a blow at the hands of the King, one that he will return a year and a day from now. Sir Gawain, the youngest of King Arthur’s knights, steps in to accept the challenge. His blow lops off the Green Knight’s head. Instead of dying, the Green Knight simply scoops up his noggin and rides away with instructions that Gawain meet him at the Green Chapel a year and a day from now to receive his equal blow.

In Burger’s poem, a cruel huntsman is condemned to be chased by devils for his inhumane treatment of man and beast on earth. Burger’s poem is one of many versions of the German folktale where the pursued horseman appears headless.

Though Irving thrills and chills us to this day with his timeless tale of the headless horseman and the hapless schoolmaster, he is definitely not the first to dream up the nightmare of a headless spirit, hell bent on revenge and destruction.

The Shadow of Samhain: The Jack O'Lantern

After a little post-Halloween breather, The Shadow of Samhain once against casts a pall over the land! Yes, we're continuing into November...just a few more excellent entries to go. This time, Paul Bibeau, best-selling author of Sundays with Vlad and a blogger in his own right, shares with us one of Halloween's most tried-and-true legends...

The cheery, gap-toothed pumpkin you see on every doorstep conceals a dark history. According to the excellent Halloween by Lesley Bannatyne, we’ve inherited Jack from an Irish folktale about a man thought he could trick the devil.

Stingy and mean-spirited, Jack found himself face to face with Scratch, who told him his time on the earth was up. Jack requested one last drink at the local tavern, and Satan obliged – changing himself into a few coins in Jack’s purse to speed up the transaction and bring him on his way. But the devil found himself trapped by the cross that lay there among Jack’s belongings. In exchange for his freedom, the devil grudgingly granted Jack another year.

When the time passed, he confronted Jack again – and this time Jack’s last request was for the devil to climb up a tree and obtain a delicious apple. Jack whipped out his penknife and carved a cross on the trunk, again trapping the poor Prince of Lies. And this time, Jack’s bargain was to be left alone. When he finally died, Jack was refused admittance into heaven, but the devil couldn’t house him either. He sent him on his way through a dark and windy afterlife, with only a lantern carved out of a turnip and lit with a single ember from hell itself to guide him.

The story is part of a long line of folktales about mortals attempting to trick the devils – or the gods – and gamble with their own fate. And there’s usually a punishment. Because we intuitively understand, in that deep, dark place we don’t visit very often, or willingly… that we aren’t really in control of what happens to us. No matter what you do for the next few decades, or years, or even moments… soon you’ll find yourself, like Jack, being taken by the hand and told it’s time to go. No trick will save you.

A funny thing happened when the Irish came to the new world. They fell in love with these magnificent new world pumpkins, and substituted them for their turnip lanterns. And then the carvings of human faces became more elaborate. Jack became, in a curious way, trapped in his own lantern. Remember that as you trick or treat through a dozen country fields or suburban lawns this season. Because as you pass all those cheery, happy, well-lit faces, you might just hear one of them whisper your name as ask you:

Please. Please let me out.

Paul Bibeau blogs about horror folklore and posts his own scary, funny stories at www.goblinbooks.com.

The Shadow of Samhain: Halloween Isn't Devil Worship; or, Where the Hell's My Halloween Carnival Gone?

Just a couple more days until Halloween is upon us. I've had so many worthy posts submitted for this series that it will be definitely continuing into next month. For now, as we lead into Halloween itself, I give you this intriguing piece from Erin Lashley of In It for the Kills, in which she deplores the gross misunderstanding of the holiday's Samhain roots amidst present-day bible-thumping America...

In many communities in the United States, Halloween has been banned from the schools amid accusations that the holiday originated in and celebrates devil worshiping. Kids in such places are no longer allowed to dress up in costumes for school, and the Halloween carnival has been replaced with a namby pamby "fall festival." This is more than just the usual reactionary tactic of calling whatever you don't like "Satanic." It is a complete misunderstanding of the history and heritage of the many Americans who are descended from Celts.

Samhain, the holiday festival we now call Halloween, was celebrated first by ancient people centuries before the birth of Christ. Not only is it not anti-Christ (or pro-devil), but it has nothing to do with Christ. To suggest otherwise is like comparing pumpkins to palm fronds. You can't worship someone who doesn't yet exist. No Christian God, no devil.

The Celts believed that the line between the spirit world and the physical world blurred during the festival of Samhain and that spirits could come over to visit our world. The good spirits, their family members who had passed, were welcomed home for a visit with good food and a warm fire. The bad spirits, what we might now refer to as demons, were wisely feared and therefore discouraged from dropping by for a snack. That is where we get the tradition of scary costumes, from the people dressing up as evil spirits in an attempt to keep the bad chaps away. Costumes did not seek to glorify demons, but to deter them.

In light of the confusion it's ironic that what we now know as Christianity actually adapted to suit the already existing holiday of Samhain. The Feast of All Saints or Hallowmas, now celebrated on November 1, was moved from February to November around the 9th century in order to tie in with Samhain.

The false connection with Satanism seems to have begun in the 18th century when a myth began that Samhain was a god of the dead and not a holiday. This misinformation came first from a series of books written by Col. Charles Vallency, who was trying to prove that the Irish came from Armenia. It was furthered by Godfrey Higgins, who apparently confused the name of the festival Samhain with the name of a Hindu deity named Samana; Higgins was trying to prove that the Celtic Druids came from India.

If there was a character in Celtic history whose name was similar to Samhain, it would have been a folk hero named Saman. However, some religious folks have taken the idea of a lord of the dead who likely didn't exist, equated his imaginary with that of their Satan, and then dropkicked this falsehood through the goalposts of everyone else's good time.

Samhain was the most important holiday of the year to the Celts. They only thought of the year as being divided into two seasons: summer and winter. Samhain was the end of summer, when they thanked their gods for the harvest so that the gods would provide another one next year. The people also settled their financial debts with one another at Samhain.

The holiday was symbolic of the cycle of life in general: one year dies so another can live. The Celts acknowledged the power of death as being the only part of life they could not control, but it was not something to be feared. They honored their dead at this time, but did not fear them either. They reserved their fear for living people, who could do far more damage.

The Shadow of Samhain: A Saturday in Salem

For the record, I take this Shadow of Samhain thing very seriously (so much so, in fact, that it looks to be spilling over right into November...), and therefore, it became clear that before the series had reached its conclusion, I would have to pay my very first visit to one of the epicenters of the occult, one of the places most dear to the history of pagan traditions--Salem, Massachusetts. So last weekend, I packed up the fam-- three generations of Solomons strong--and made that trek up the Mass Turnpike to the place where, in 1692, one of the worst atrocities in American history took place.

In the end, I learned a great deal about the true history of witchcraft, about the realities of the actual witch trials, and perhaps most decidedly of all, about the horrendous traffic conditions in Salem in October. To put it as simply as possible, people, my best advice to you is that, if you decide to visit there between now and Halloween, use a helicopter. Maybe one of the shopkeepers will let you land it on their roof, I don't know. All I know is, at the end of a six-hour drive--three of which consisted of looking for a place to park--I was about ready to be burned at at the stake (or, more properly, hanged, as my witch-expert blogger buddy Andre Dumas points out.)

However, it truly was a blast to experience, and I'm glad we took the trouble to head out there. There is a rich tradition that permeates that town, and an almost tangible sense of the supernatural that seems to lurk around every corner. Supposedly, the town rests on some ancient crater that focuses occult energies--it sounds like something out of Ghostbusters to me, but hey, I'd certainly like to believe it's true.


Right off the bat, one of the attractions that caught little Zombelina's interest was the mysterious House of the Seven Gables, made famous in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel. To satisfy my daughter's curiosity, we headed over there forthwith, only to discover that it was completely sold out for the day (how does a historic landmark "sell out", anyway?) Nevertheless, I managed to sneak the little one past the ticket line and on to the grounds of the house for a bit, even if we couldn't go in. We were able to find the birthplace of Hawthorne, which did give the English major in me a shiver of glee.


From there, we discovered a most unique and interesting place. It was the World of Witches Museum, on Wharf Street. Whereas most of the museum-like attractions in the town are preoccupied with the actual Witch Trials of 1692, this place seemed to be the only one providing a genuine overview of and appreciation for the entire history of witches and witchcraft, from a Wiccan point of view. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the actual Wiccan community of Salem, beyond all the tourist-trapism. At one point, they encouraged my kids to pick out gemstones from a pile, as a way of divining something about their personality--whereupon we learned that my son, Wee-Sol, is destined to basically rule the world at some point. So there's that.


Pirate ships, eclectic shops and spooky old graveyards were the order of the day, until the evening came, and it was time for the trolley tour. Thanks to this tour, I was able to learn that apparently Salem is haunted by about 67,492 ghosts. In fact, if I had to estimate, I'd day it's more than likely that there are more spirits residing in the town than living people. If our tour guide is to be believed, that is. Let's see, there's the famous Joshua Ward House, haunted by one-time Salem High Sheriff George Corwin; the jewel thief and the woman in white who haunt Baker's Island; and of course, the restaurant Rockafella's, a former church believed to have so much supernatural activity, it's a wonder there's any room for the patrons.

Are these stories true, or based on any semblance of truth? Honestly--and this is something I picked up in the wild and woolly world of rasslin', where tall tales are the order of the day--I don't really care. I'm more interested in the pleasure of hearing the tale than in discerning its veracity. I want them to be true--and that is good enough for me.

Following our tour and a quick bite to eat, it was time to depart the fair town of Salem and head for home (yes, it was a mere day trip--what can I say? We're a family of masochists.) The long, thankfully traffic-free ride home was filled with ruminations of witchery and things that go bump in the night. I'm very glad I had the opportunity to finally see the Halloween capital of America. Perhaps an annual visit will be in order from here on in...

The Shadow of Samhain: How I Learned to Stop Pumpkin Carving and Love the Turnip

Welcome back to The Shadow of Samhain, as we are now less than two weeks away from our favorite day... This time, Jen Parnell of Zombies Are Magic stops by to share with us the ancient, yet oft-overlooked Halloween tradition of turnip carving. So gather round, put the pumpkins away, and listen...

This month we celebrate Halloween, also known as All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Eve, and, if you want to go really old school, Samhain. Samhain is derived from Old Irish and means “Summers End.” Celtic people celebrated the changing of the seasons during Samhain. Because they were going from a season of “light” to a season of “dark,” ancient Celts believed the boundary between this world and the Otherworld could be crossed, allowing spirits, both good and bad, to pass. Therefore the Celts created a variety of traditions to honor and protect themselves from the dead during this important harvest festival. Dressing in costume and lighting bonfires were just a few ways to honor and appease the spirits. As the pagan Samhain evolved into the not-so-Pagan Halloween, many of these traditions continued. Apple bobbing, trick or treating, and turnip carving can all be traced back to Samhain.

Alright, so turnip carving didn’t exactly take off like the rest of these traditions did. Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their All Hallows’ Eve customs to America with them, including carving turnips or rutabagas to ward off evil spirits. Being the smart people that they were, they quickly discovered that carving pumpkins was a whole lot easier than carving turnips. Hence, the Jack O’ Lantern we know and love today. Nevertheless, there is a small underground movement afoot aimed at reviving the tradition of turnip carving. I am, so far, the only member of the group I know of, but I hear there are whole groups of people, especially in Ireland, devoted to the cause. Before I make my case for the turnip, let’s explore how and why this tradition got started.

The practice of carving hollowed-out turnips, known as “Samhnag” in Scottish Gaelic, dates back many hundreds of years. The turnips were turned into lanterns by placing a burning ember or small candle inside to commemorate the souls in purgatory. The small lanterns were also placed in windows to ward off the evil dead. The scarier the face, the more effective it was at keeping malevolent spirits away. Later, perhaps because these traditions were a bit too Pagan for some tastes, the legend of “Stingy Jack” arose to explain this custom.

“Stingy Jack” is a bit of Irish folklore about a drunken miser who dared to challenge the Devil and paid the ultimate price for it. There are many variations of the story but the basic outline is that Jack was out drinking with the Devil one night and when the tab arrived, Jack convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin to pay the barkeep. The Devil would then turn himself back into his original form and leave the barkeep none the wiser. The Devil agreed, but instead of paying the bartender, Jack placed the coin in his pocket next to a crucifix, thus trapping the Devil. Jack kept him there for quite a while, only agreeing to let him out when the Devil promised never to come and claim Jack’s soul. Jack died 10 years later and found himself banished from Heaven for his wicked ways. He went to the Devil to find a resting place but the Devil refused to take him, citing their earlier agreement.

Thus, Jack was doomed to wander the earth in eternal darkness. The Devil, feeling sorry for Jack, offered him a gift: a single ember to light his way. Jack hollowed out a turnip, his favorite food, to hold the ember and illuminate his path. Tradition holds that placing a lighted turnip on your doorstep will remind the wandering Jack of his penance, thus keeping him from mischief.

Whether derived from Celtic ritual or Irish folklore, turnip carving caught on. That is, until the big, soft, delicious pumpkin was discovered and turnips went right out the window. Being the good Irish gal that I am, I decided to forgo carving pumpkins this year and devote myself to the turnip. The hard, smelly, bad tasting turnip. I can’t say that I have ever knowingly eaten a turnip in my life. After carving one I am not about to start. But I can say that carving a turnip takes determination and guts, and the end result is totally worth it. Here is how you do it.

1. Pick out a turnip (the larger the better. Try to get one with some color.)
2. Cut the bottom off to make a flat surface.
3. Grab every knife, saw, or sharp spoon at your disposal.
4. Slice off the top of the turnip to make the lid.
5. Spend the next hour carving out the center. Have Air Freshener and band-aids at the ready.
6. Carve a face into the turnip. Try to make it look like a Gaelic face. I don’t know what that looks like but we want to be authentic.
7. Place a burning ember inside. If you do not have a burning ember available, a tea light will do.
8. Place the lid back on and you have a Jack O’ Turnip. (Warning, the lid will catch on fire. Take your pictures immediately.)

I suggest you carve your turnip outside since they smell and you won’t be tempted to make a pie out of the filling. They also begin to wither in about two days, so enjoy your turnip while you can. All joking aside, turnip carving is pretty awesome and the end result is really creepy, in a shrunken head sort of way. Having carved my turnips and placed them outside my door, I feel that festering souls, evil spirits, and Stingy Jack will all be appeased. I will now go back to eating my pumpkin pie, drinking my pumpkin beer, and lighting my pumpkin candles knowing that my Samhnag is keeping me safe.

Give turnip carving a try, I can’t say you won’t be sorry, you probably will, but at least you can say you were keeping it old school. Happy Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve, and Samhain to everybody!

The Shadow of Samhain: Putting the Christ in... Halloween?

Welcome back, Halloween-heads, to The Shadow of Samhain series here in The Vault of Horror. This time, I bring you the first of a series of special guest posts. Joining us for the initial one is one of the most fascinating and well-rounded horror bloggers you're likely to ever encounter, John W. Morehead of Theofantastique.

John is an avid student of both speculative fiction, as well as religion in popular culture, and always manages to combine the two areas in a most captivating fashion. This piece is no exception either, as Mr. Morehead dives headlong into the love-hate relationship between Christianity and Halloween, and how it dates back to the conversion of what was, for centuries, a pagan holiday...

The month of October has finally arrived and soon it will conclude with Halloween. For those of us who are huge fans of the holiday it couldn’t have come sooner. In fact, I’ve been hitting various store locations looking for decorations and memorabilia since late August. It may come as a surprise to many, but Halloween is very popular in my Utah cultural context, and it is not uncommon to find a few Halloween items shortly after the Fourth of July in select stores.

But this time of the year also provides an opportunity to probe this fascinating holiday in a little more depth. It is the second largest retail sales holiday in the country, second only to Christmas, and it is usually either loved or demonized depending upon the understanding of its background, history, and symbolism. With this post I will bring some historical and cultural considerations to bear on the evolution and development of this mutating festival as it has worked its way through various cultures. One of the areas that I am interested in is how the holiday has been influenced by Christianity. It is not uncommon to find many Christians opposed to Halloween due to concerns over its pagan origins, and during this time of year the rhetoric against the holiday ratchets up, particularly among Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists. But as I will touch on below, this has not always been the case as Christianity has embraced and influenced various elements that make up the history of Halloween in its diverse manifestations.

Halloween as we celebrate it in the modern period in the West is a popular derivative of All Hallow Even or the eve of All Saints’ Day celebrated on November 1 on the Christian calendar. It is celebrated together with All Souls’ Day on November 2. Its earliest origins, and those usually cited by Protestants, are found in the Celtic festival from Ireland of Samhain, pronounced “sow-in” and meaning “summer’s end.” It was a seasonal and agricultural festival associated with the transition from summer to fall. Concerned Protestants often claim that the Celtic festival was associated with animal or human sacrifice. Although this cannot be completely discounted since it appears that elements of this were featured in the festival as the Druids practiced it, the festival largely served as a festival of the dead (although not specifically), and as a time of supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter. It was also a borderline festival that took place between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. Celtic lore discusses it as a boundary between summer and winter, light and darkness. Understood in this way it functioned as a “liminal” festival, a moment of ritual transition.

As significant as the pagan origins are to what we celebrate as Halloween, there are also Christian elements that have played a part. These come initially from Catholicism in the British Isles and elsewhere through its festive rites. This included ritual practices that were developed with the medieval holy days of All Souls’ and All Saints’ Day. It was an important part of Christian year, marked by high masses and prayers. These activities honored the saints and martyrs of the church, and affirmed the collective claims that the dead had on the living. Various church rituals included the ringing of bells, using flowers to decorate the houses of the dead, visits by family and friends to the dead, clergy processions to graveyards, and devotional offerings of holy water, milk or food at gravesides. Other developments during this period were also important in contributing to our contemporary Halloween, including the significance of All Saints’ and All Soul’s Day to children and young adults, and that it served as the season of masking and impersonation. Of course, these practices are reflected in Halloween as a time of costuming by children in our time.

As the festival continued its journey through cultures in history it arrived in England and it became connected to the time of Hallowtide. Hallowtide involved various fire rituals, including torchlight ceremonies to honor the dead. In addition to fire rituals, “souling” was an important practice. This involved taking bread or soul cakes that were distributed to relatives and poor neighbors who offered to pray for souls in purgatory.

Souling is important in understanding Halloween in that it involved individuals moving door to door asking for food in return for prayers for the dead (they used hollowed-out turnip lanterns with a candle for light), and it is the practice of souling that enabled this English Hallowmass practice to survive the effects of the Protestant Reformation.

It is at this juncture that Protestants would do well to engage in some self-reflection at this time of year. Although Hallowtide was practiced by the Roman Catholic Church, it came under attack in England with the Protestant Reformation. Protestants had concerns about the inclusion of purgatory in their celebration of dead saints, and they took exception to its ritualism. After the Reformation there was no common set of ritual practices that marked this seasonal event.

But given this slice of history, and the influence and participation of certain branches of Christendom in the development of what we know today as Halloween, it is curious that many Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists find the holiday so objectionable. Here a little historical amnesia seems to be operative. As the historian Ronald Hutton has stated, for Protestants one of the arguments against Halloweeen is

"that it is essentially unchristian ... a Christian feast of the dead is thoroughly embedded in the history of Hallowe'en and that its legacy is usually impossible to distnguish from that of paganism in the practices and associations of the night. It is of course maintained by what is still by far the largest of the world's churches, the Roman Catholic. To describe the feast as fundamentally unchristian is therefore either ill-informed or disingenuous."

I keep hoping that one year Protestants might dig a little deeper on the history of this holiday, and that they might recognize the influence of their own religious tradition in its development. It would also be nice to see an embrace of a feast of the dead within Protestantism, but that might be asking too much. But that won’t stop some of us from enjoying this rich holiday whatever its origins and influences.

The Shadow of Samhain: Dark Reign of the Fomorians

October is finally upon us, and I, for one couldn't be happier. But you'd expect that of me, wouldn't you--being the curator of The Vault of Horror, and all. In recognition of the month that brings us Halloween, the horror highlight of the calendar, I'm bringing you a special series that will explore the very heart of the holiday by taking a look at its distant history. You won't find anything here about Ben Cooper costumes or the Great Pumpkin, as awesome as those things may be. Rather, The Shadow of Samhain will be all about the pre-modern folklore, superstitions and traditions that have helped shape All Hallows Eve into what it is today.

Look for a series of special guest posts over the course of the next four weeks--but for now, I'll be starting things off myself with a look at an ancient legend that has long fascinated me...


From the oceans off Northern Africa they came--a twisted and evil race of sea-faring demons whose origins are lost to the mists of time. In Celtic lore, they were believed to have been the first settlers of the Emerald Isle of Ireland, and they ruled it once with cruel fists of iron. They were the Fomoire, or Fomorians; and their story is tied in directly with the Celtic festival of Samhain, precursor to Halloween. In fact, it can be argued that the linking of Halloween with all things frightening may actually find its origin in this terrible and horrifying race of monsters.

A breed of malformed and misshapen atrocities whose existence was believed to have far predated that of man himself, the Fomorians were a bizarre mix of human, animal and otherwise unnatural elements. They were varied in appearance. Some might possess the head of a horse and the body of a man, for example; others might appear to be giant fish with legs to walk on land with; some boasted a multitude limbs or eyes, while others might have only one of each; and still others might actually appear beautiful to the human eye, although their souls were just as black as those of their uglier brethren.

They were a warlike species--an inspiration, in some respects, for the race of orcs found in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien--and legend had it that any people attempting to settle in Ireland were forced to contend with them and their bloodthirsty ways. The first to try were a group called the Partholons, who met their ghastly end when the Fomorians unleashed a deadly plague upon them. Next were the Nemeds, a tribe which found itself immediately enslaved by the monstrous masters of Ireland.

The connection of the Fomorians to Samhain begins here, as it was believed that each year on this day, October 31, the Fomorians demanded their annual tribute from the Nemedian people living amongst them. This tribute would typically include not only cattle but also small children, sacrificed to keep the Fomorian demons at bay. Thus, the practice of animal and human sacrifice many believe was once part of Celtic Samhain ritual was in part a commemoration of the days when the Fomorians came around to collect their yearly payment and satisfy their bottomless bloodlust.

The age of the Fomorians in Ireland was an evil time looked back on with dread. It lasted many generations, but at last approached its end with the arrival on the island of another race of beings, not quite as ancient as the Fomorians, but still older than humanity. They were the Tuatha Dé Dannan, a beautiful clan of god-like beings who wielded powerful magic, and whose coming was reportedly heralded by a mysterious fog that blanketed Ireland for days. Much as the Fomorians seem to have played a part in Tolkien's imaginings, so too did the Tuatha, resembling nothing so much as the majestic Elvish race described in the author's writings.

The Tuatha managed to co-exist with the Fomorians for a time, dividing the land amongst them, and even intermarrying with the ghastly creatures on occasion in order to further diplomatic relations between the two groups. Nevertheless, all this was a ploy, as the Tuatha awaited the opportunity to rid the land of the tyranny of their demonic neighbors.

This opportunity came in the form of one Lugh of the Long Hand, grandson of the hideous cyclops Fomorian chieftain, Balor of the Strong Blows. The result of a union between a comely Fomorian and a Tuatha, Lugh was beautiful in appearance, and discarded upon birth by Balor, who believed the child a threat (a common trope in ancient folklore). Taken in by the Tuatha, Lugh grew to become their savior.

The routing of the Fomorians from Ireland came on the day when Balor's detachment of tribute gatherers appeared at the castle of the Tuatha, demanding their unspeakable payments of cattle and children. Lugh butchered the Fomorians where they stood, leaving only a handful to skulk back to Balor's tower stronghold, located on a small island off the northwest coast, to tell the tale. Enraged, Balor mustered his Fomorian armies to make war against the mighty legions of the Tuatha, led by his own grandson.

That would be the final Samhain on which the Fomorians would ever lay claim to any Irish land. On the plain at Mag Tured, in the Connacht region of Ireland, the Fomorians and the Tuatha De Dannan waged a fierce, epic battle. The demons took an early advantage, slaying many of the proud Tuatha, until Lugh slaughtered his grandfather in one-on-one combat. Leaderless, the Fomorians fled, and were completely wiped out by the Tuatha, save for a mere four of them, forced to take refuge in Balor's tower.

Ireland had at last been freed from the yoke of these unspeakable creatures, and on the very feast day of Samhain on which they had wreaked their worst yearly terrors upon the land. The remaining four would stay far off the coast in Balor's stronghold--bizarre, ancient curiosities to be avoided by any sailing those waters; a lurking remnant of the fearsome hordes that had once ruled Ireland without mercy. The Tuatha would come to rule from then on, and after they eventually vanished into obscurity and legend, man would at last come to live on the land once fought for by gods and demons.

Among the Celts, and particularly the Gaels who would come to dominate Ireland in the Iron Age, the harvest festival of Samhain was associated always with the Fomorians. Whatever its origin in reality, whether inspired by some tyrannical human tribe, or fabricated completely out of thin air, the legend of the Fomorians loomed large over Gaelic culture. The horrifying tribute collected each year; the bloody battle of Mag Tured--Samhain was an annual reminder of these things. Perhaps then, despite the many positive aspects of the festival, this was why there was also such an element of deep-seated terror attached to it. A "race memory", if you will, of events that existed only in the realm of folklore. Or did they?


Photo Credits
The Fomors by John Duncan, 1912
The Fomorii by Andrew L. Paciorek
Daghda by A. Fantalov, 1998
Lugh by Mickie Mueller
Combat of Balor and Lugh Lamfada by Miranda Gray, 1995
Fomorian by Rowena Morrill