Clare Hawkins was born and brought up in Scotland and now lives in Essex. She is the author of the forthcoming Gothic House Mystery series for Sapere Books.
My earlier life in Scotland is now distanced by more decades than I like to admit, but the country and its history, landscapes and languages have had a powerful influence on my writing. (The books in my forthcoming Gothic House Mystery series all have Scottish settings.) Personal recollections sometimes surface with surprising vividness too. For example, my grandchildren’s excitement at the prospect of trick-or-treating reawakens memories of how we as children celebrated Hallowe’en in the 1950s in the west of Scotland.
The practice of ‘guising’, or dressing as something other than oneself, has existed in Scotland for hundreds of years. It may even be related to the pagan tradition of ‘Samhuinn’, Summer’s End, the transition from summer to winter, when grotesque spirits of the dead roam abroad, intent on mischief. The best protection is to disguise oneself as one of them.
So we children became a fearsome collection of little witches and ghouls in our homemade cardboard masks, witches’ cloaks and hats made of old blackout curtains, with props such as inky pipe-cleaner spiders and lurid papier mâché severed fingers. We visited our neighbours’ houses, armed with torches and high expectations of receiving sweet treats. However, these gifts were not entirely free; some sort of entertainment had to be provided by us, the guisers, in return. Our sheepish, tuneless renditions of such ditties as ‘Donald where’s yer troosers?’ or ‘Ye cannae shove yer granny aff a bus’ were greeted with sympathetic applause and a handful of sweets from the adults, who no doubt had to suppress their laughter after a few drams as their own celebration of Hallowe’en.
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Featured image credit: Photo by Szabó János on Unsplash.
