This picture shows the turnip lantern which I carved for this year's Halloween!

As I mentioned in my column about Halloween last year, Halloween is a very old pre-Christian festival in the British Isles.

On the night of Halloween, it was said that the veil between this world and the other world of spirits grows thin. Perhaps there are spirits, ghosts, and witches abroad. To protect ourselves, and also as a bit of fun, we carve turnips, or nowadays, often pumpkins, and put them on the window sill. Their scary faces will keep such things away.

This year, I hollowed out a turnip. The flesh of the turnip can be kept and eaten. It is important to make a lid with a chimney in it, for the candle to breathe out. You can put a tea light inside, or, simply a stub of candle, as in the picture of my lantern below.

At this time of year, it gets dark early, especially because in Britain, we put the clocks back an hour at the end of October. This means that when before it was sunset at five thirty, it is now sunset at four thirty. Days grow shorter. The weather grows colder too. Traditionally, although not so much with modern food supplies, the earth would produce less, so food needed to be conserved. No wonder, then, that people have a festival before the long winter ahead.

You can see the sort of dressing up, guising, and games which people used to have in Scotland here. One game involves eating scones, which are covered in treacle, and hung from the ceiling, without your hands. Another involves dooking for apples in a basin of water, again, without using your hands, only your mouth. This is harder than it looks.

https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/17-halloween-pictures-youll-remember-if-you-grew-edinburgh-641691

Interestingly, dialect words in Scotland for turnip include "neep" and "tumshie". I reckon that my tumshie lantern has the right look!

Vocabulary

guising - dressing up in costume and going from door to door at Halloween; people who do this are called guisers

abroad - usually people take this to mean in a foreign country; abroad can also mean out and about

hollowing out - scooping out, removing the inside

stub - the short end of something left after the larger part has been used up; in this case, after most of the candle has burnt away.

scone - a British baked good of flour, milk, and fat.

tumshie and neep mean a turnip