Nos Calan Gaeaf – celebrate a Welsh Halloween!

The annual Calan Gaeaf celebration in Wales, every November 1st, marks the end of the autumn harvest and the beginning of winter with traditions best described as creepy.
But falling in step after Halloween, that feels just right.
Festivities you might see provide an interesting mix of the macabre with a feast that looks forward to the beauty of winter in the Welsh countryside, including emphasis on ghosts, ghouls, and spirits, which has earned it the nickname ”The Mother of Halloween.”
It was one of three Spirit Nights (Ysbrydnos) in the folklore calendar and many traditions grew up around the night.
Almost inevitably, they were connected with things frightening or disconcerting…but it was also a time to have some fun.

Its origins go all the way back to ancient Celtic traditions, making it a significant historical and cultural festival, representing the end of the harvest season and the onset of winter, a crucial season for those ancient agricultural communities.
The Celts, in fact, thought the transition from the lighter half of the year to the darker half, along with its shortened days, was when the veil between the living world and the spirit world was at its thinnest. Right or wrong, these beliefs led to a good reason to try to appease the supernatural world.
Not by chance, the night before Calan Gaeaf, known as Nos Galan Gaeaf, held an air of mystery and superstition.
Ghosts, witches and goblins were believed to appear at midnight on this night, especially on the entrances to footpaths, crossroads, at stiles and in churchyards.

The Celts who lived in Wales at that time believed that spirits roamed freely, sworing they saw the ghosts of the dead at midnight.
In different parts of Wales, these ghosts took on various characters, and the most commonly spotted were the ‘ladi wen’, literally white lady, while In the northern reaches of Wales, people saw also a tail-less ‘hwch ddu gwta’, or black sow, a huge black beast with red eyes that could crush the bones of any person who crossed its path and was said to seize souls and carry them off to the underworld.
Canwyll Corph, or Corpse Candles, was also to be feared, ghostly lights that would be seen passing along the route of an upcoming funeral or hovering around the spot where an accident would happen. They would also flutter along the edge of the waves in anticipation of a shipwreck.

One of the most chilling traditions involved villagers around a bonfire, called the Coelcerth, There would be dancing and singing, and apples and potatoes would be roasted in the fire.
At the end of the evening, before leaving the fire to burn out, each person would mark a stone with their name and place it in the embers.
The belief was that if a stone was missing the next morning, the person it belonged to would face misfortune or even death within the year in a practice which reflects the deep-seated superstitions and the connection with the spiritual world that Calan Gaeaf embodies.
Imagine the sleepless night you would have hoping your stone would be there!

Moreover, It was considered prudent to protect yourself against witches on this particular night, and the ringing of church bells were believed to keep witches away, as was wearing your underclothes inside out!
To protect against witches coming into the house, it was also advised to hang a hag stone (glain nadredd), a stone with a naturally occurring hole in it, by the door, preferably on a red cord, for added protection.

Many of these Nos Calan Gaeaf customs have over time died out.
The ghost story however is one tradition that has remained steadfast and, as we do still today, people of many generations ago enjoyed a good ghost story by the fire, including tales of headless horsemen, spectral wraiths, ghosts, goblins, witches and supernatural beings, knowing of course that when they woke up on 1 November everything will be back to normal. At least, hopefully.

Images from web – Google Research