| It was a Celtic, rather than a specifically Irish, festival - originally Samhain, a pagan festival among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. The ancient Irish called the festival "Samhain" (pronounced Sa-Wain), which is now the Gaelic word for the month of November, although in recent times the Hallowe'en is celebrated on October 31st. The word Hallowe'en is of Scottish origin, and comes from "Hallows Evening". It was believed at this time, souls could wander freely across the earth. Hallowe'en was also viewed as a time when evil spirits, the devil and witches were at their most powerful. The best, concise account of Halloween in Ireland is in 'Celebrating Irish Festivals. Calendar of seasonal celebrations' by Ruth Marshall, Hawthorn Press, Stroud, Gloucestershire, ISBN 1- 903458-23-4, pp 14-27. A brilliant comprehensive description of Traditional Irish/Celtic Halloween can be found at Irish in Schools. It is a PDF document. All resources in that spectacular website are free. Ruth Kelly’s The Book of Hallowe'en (1919) has a chapter on Ireland at http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/boh/boh09.htm Today, some claim that Hallowe'en in Ireland appeals more to adults than to children, with fancy dress parties de rigueur for some and considerable sums of money being spent on costumes. Halloween is certainly a significant enough celebration that 1. BBC Northern Ireland has an excellent site 2. it forms part of Northern Ireland's tourist strategy, as you will see at http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/article.aspx? ArticleID=1613 & http://www.nitb.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=659. My sincere thanks to Professor Patrick Buckland & Irish in Schools for his valuable guidance. |
| 246 pages absolutely jam-packed with Family Fun Activities & Teaching Resources. This book includes lesson plans, crafts, recipes, Jokes & Riddles, Crosswords, Wordsearches, Vocabulary 7 counting exercises, Handwriting & memory, numbers, phonics, colouring, Halloween Safety, Superstitions, History, Sight word cards, fingerplays, scrapbooking pages, tags, bags and labels, incitations and more. Click this link to preview |
| Halloween Celtic Halloween |
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