The Hallows
The Regency viewed Hallowe’en – ‘The Hallows’ – as the culmination and conclusion of the ritual year.
I think it was the festival that meant most to Chalky on a personal level. Death was a mystery that much concerned him, as some of his poems reveal.
The skull in the photograph was used in the ritual every year for many years. It was given to Chalky when he was an art teacher by a pupil whose father was a builder. It was found during construction work in London: a museum specialist identified it as the skull of a medieval plague victim, buried in a plague-pit or mass grave.
Here are the preamble and ritual for the Hallows:
Preamble
Anciently named Samhein by the Celts, adopted as All Saints Eve and Day by the Christians, also called All Souls, I have called it by the more general pagan name of the Hallows, for the term fits it well and shows its holy intention.
It is the end of our annual pilgrimage and the ending of life’s exploration. At it comes the grand climax and combination of our themes in the land where the living and the dead meet. It is a brave and noble ceremony. We have moved in our ritual passage through the stages of our lives. Now we move to contemplate our repose in our deaths, and to consider those many who have died before us. It follows from the assessments of the Autumn Equinox, that, at the Hallows, we consider the paths we have trodden, and the lessons we have learnt from the round of the year, and ponder deeply our state at the end of our lives. Yet this is not to be a gloomy session of self criticism despite its sombre theme. It is a festival offering courage, and with courage goes encouragement to go bravely where our terrors and fears reside; to go deep into the places of the mind and face out these archetypal fears. This is the time to talk with the dead as well as with death in ourselves; to bring out these hidden things and ask them to join in festival dance.
The Hallows is one of the great pagan feasts and ushers Winter in. After this date the leaves will rapidly fall from the trees. The frosts will come and the November gales will hunt wildly across the land.
