Top ten spooky Irish traditions for Halloween – PHOTOS

Clearly, as many of these are pagan traditions, they go back much further than 1,000 bloody A.D.! WHo's the eejit that came up with this date? The author?

SOY MILK in colcannon!!?? Sweet mother of Jesus, who thought that one up?

"It was said that if you drop a cutting of your hair into the embers of the fire the identity of your first husband would be revealed." Expecting more than one?

Please forgive my ignorance but is putting prizes in the barnbrack the precursor to our wedding cakes with charms in them attached to ribbons? Thimbles for old maids, rings for the next married? Never got the thimble, but sometimes wished I had...haha

Good article, and some interesting posts. But the sad fact is that the Irish, more particularly the young Irish, are totally cut off from all the traditions of Halloween. It's nonsense to talk of "top ten Irish Halloween customs". They don't exist. In fact, I happened to be in Ireland at Halloween some years back. I was disappointed that NOT ONE young Irish person I spoke to knew that Halloween has deep Irish roots. The fact is that the Irish are rapidly losing their culture. It's a complex phenomenon, caused by globalization, English language, Mass Immigration of foreigners, poor education etc. But its' happening, and accelerating. Any American who has traveled in Ireland will have found that the Irish are utterly ignorant of what their grandparents knew of the country's lore. The culture of the Irish is now as dead as the culture of the ancient Egyptians or Aztecs. The result is that the modern Irish are quite boring people, dull and bland.

Never ceases to amaze that in a country whose architectural heritage goes back 5000 years, an extensive astrologically tied tradition manifest in a timekeeper such as Newgrange older than the pyramids and an extensive folkloric tradition reaching back to times biblical that irish tradition is nonexistent until the arrival of Rome. Samhain, or old irish samain is cognate with assembly which in the annals would indicate a royal assembly at the end of the harvest. The 'Cath Maige Tuireadh' or Battle of Mag Tuireadh takes place on Samhain where the old deities Morrigan and Dagda make love before the battle. Have the heroics of young Fionn MacCumhail against the burner Aillen on the night of samhain have been magically transposed to the tenth century also? For the love of god give us our due and understand that the celtic language is older than Latin.

In the Barmbracks in Cork, we never had a thimble. We had a Pea - that meant you wouldn't get married. There was also a stick - supposed to symbolize an unhappy marriage (referred to when we were young as - your husband/wife will beat you). For games then, we had the usual snap apple and bobbing for apples. We had something similar to the friar one you mentioned but it was a plate with mound of flour and a cherry on top. You take turns slicing a section of the mound of flour to the side until the cherry falls. The person who makes the cherry fall then gets their head pushed into the plate of flour. We also did races with monkey nuts on the ground - you had to move the monkey nut with your nose. Great fun!!

Reminded me of my father who as a young lad in Dublin, circa 1910, would tie a rope across the narrow streets to opposing door knobs and then knock on both doors. Kind of a harmless trick by today,s standards