{"id":40626,"date":"2022-10-31T06:30:17","date_gmt":"2022-10-30T17:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=40626"},"modified":"2022-10-30T18:42:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T05:42:13","slug":"its-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2022\/10\/31\/its-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Halloween!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It always feels a little odd celebrating Halloween in New Zealand, given the festival’s very close association with the northern hemisphere autumn. Even the nature of contemporary celebration\u2014dressing up in scary costumes, jack o\u2019 lanterns, trick-or-treating\u2014are all activities that make more sense in the gathering dark of autumn nights, rather than the long, light, evenings of the southern hemisphere’s late spring\/early summer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It’s probably not surprising, therefore, that I rely on books to imbibe the Halloween experience—and one of my favourite tales is the Scottish tale of Tam Lin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I particularly like the retelling included in Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Armorer’s House<\/em><\/strong>, an historical novel for children. The folktale appears in the Chapter titled \u201cA Tale for Hallowe\u2019en.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I hope this small sample gives you a feel for why, even though it\u2019s very much a kids\u2019 retelling, I think it\u2019s well worth a read:<\/p>\n

“\u2026 Oh, but it was wild and lonely up there<\/em>, with the larks singing in the wide skies, and the whaups crying, and the land dropping away from her feet to the blue hills of the Border Country. And all at once Janot was afraid, and just for a moment she thought that she would take the gold pin from her gown and leave it for a gift to the Fairy Kind, and go home quickly, as she had come. But she was not one to turn away from a thing because she was afraid; so she bent forward across the well-curb, and broke off a long wild-rose spray that arched above it. There were two pink blossoms upon the spray, and as she broke it off, the petals fell from one of them, as is the way of wild roses when their branch is shaken. She leaned forward to watch the five petals floating in the dark water, and there was her own face looking up at her from the depths\u2014aye, and another face looking over her shoulder! A thin face it was, and dark enough to startle any maid.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For the time that it might take your heart to beat twice, Janot never moved. Then she turned slowly from the well-curb, still holding the rose-switch in her hand. Close beside her on the green-sward stood a brave young gallant, clad all in green, from his close-fitting hose to his feathered bonnet. And oh, but he was bonny, despite his black hair and his wan, dark face; there was a cleft to his chin and a quirk to his eyebrow, and the eyes of him were bright and grey \u2026<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 I am called Tam Lin,\u201d said the young man, and, as he spoke, he doffed his bonnet to her so low that it swept the fern \u2026”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

by PJ Fitzpatrick<\/p><\/div>\n

If you have a favourite Halloween story, please do share in the comments. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It always feels a little odd celebrating Halloween in New Zealand, given the festival’s very close association with the northern hemisphere autumn. Even the nature of contemporary celebration\u2014dressing up in scary costumes, jack o\u2019 lanterns, trick-or-treating\u2014are all activities that make more sense in the gathering dark of autumn nights, rather than the long, light, evenings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40626"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40632,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40626\/revisions\/40632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}