Ed Ranks the Top 5 Legends of Samhain

Avert thine eyes, noble Christians!

Hey, it’s November 1. All Saints Day! The Day of the Dead! The Day of the Innocents! A lot of other Christian things that are stolen from pre-Christian pagan holidays. One of those pagan holidays is Samhain.  It’s not the only one, since a “fall festival” was common all throughout a number of cultures.  But if you look at some of the modern traditions and legends around Halloween, the Day of the Dead, etc. – it’s pretty clear Samhain was one of the biggest influences.

The basic story of Samhain? Well, it’s a Gaelic festival from Ireland marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter and the "dark half" of the year. That darkness unsurprisingly became focused on things like death, including the fact that it was a day when the “doorways to the Otherworld” opened, allowing supernatural beings and the souls of the dead to come into our world. OoOoOoo. 

Here are the top five legends associated with Samhain, taken from Irish Mythology. Why not more than five? Eh. This is quite enough.

5. Kings Be Dying Like Crazy 

Halloween must have seemed like a good day to abdicate the throne in ancient Celtic times, because HOLY SHIT it was not good to still be a Celtic king on November 1.  According to a number of legends, Samhain brought forward some pretty unavoidable monarch death.

• In one story, King Conaire Mór apparently broke too many vows and saw red riders foretelling of his death. After fighting off hordes of enemies while trapped in a hostel, he’s eventually cursed with an unquenchable thirst and one of his protectors has to go out and find him water. By the time the protector comes back, he finds his king in the process of being beheaded. Of course, this was on Samhain.
• Next up! The two legendary kings Diarmait mac Cerbaill and Muirchertach mac Ercae are both also told prophesies of how they will die and try to avoid them. That doesn’t work at all (as you pretty much can guess from any mythological tale about avoiding prophecy), and both are viciously wounded, set on fire, and drowned on Samhain. Because just one form of killing isn't enough.
• In yet another “adios, king” tale, King Crimthann mac Fidaig of Munster is poisoned on Samhain by his own sister, Mongfind, who wants her own children to rule. Her plan wasn’t that well thought-out though and Crimthann must have least suspected something because he told her to drink the drink with him to prove it wasn’t poisoned. But I guess Mongfind was committed to the plan by then and drank it with him, so they both died. Now that’s dedication to your children!
• But hey, at least this is just legend – right? Maybe not. Some scholars argue that the Irish bog bodies (mummified remains found in peat bogs) might in fact be the corpses of kings who were ritualistically sacrifice on… yep… Samhain. HEY, and speaking of sacrifice...

4. Lots and Lots of Human Sacrifice

According to another legend, every year on Samhain the people of Nemed (Nemed isn’t a town, it’s a guy. So the people of Nemed are just his clan, I suppose) had to give 2/3 of their children to a bunch of monstrous creatures named the "Fomorians" (usually depicted as giants or sea raiders). They were essentially death gods who represented destruction, chaos, darkness, blight, and drought. You know. Fun stuff! Oh, and the people also had to give up 2/3 of their grain and milk to the Fomorians as well.  Which, after giving up 2/3 of your children just seems like some dickish and petty rubbing of salt in the wound. Mathematically if EVERY YEAR you give up 2/3 of your children, your population is going to decrease substantially and the Nemedians will go extinct. This doesn’t seem like a very sustainable plan from the side of the Fomorians. Maybe 1/3 every eight years or so? Let’s not be greedy, Fomorians. But that’s not the only sacrifice tale. According to another story on Samhain, the first-born children would be sacrificed at a stone idol in Magh Slécht to the death/fertility god Crom Cruach. Yeah, they had a lot of death gods. And it’s odd that a death god would also be a fertility god. Those seem sort of opposite.

3. Three Lady Werewolves Emerge to Kill Sheep

Oh great. "Sexy Werewolf" costumes.

According to a story translated roughly as the “Colloquy of the Ancients” (band name?), on every Samhain three female werewolves would rise up from the the prehistoric graves near Cruachan (one of the Otherworldly portals that could be used on Samhain). What did these lady werewolves do? Well, they were really digging the “wolf” half of their personality, so they mainly just went roaming the Irish countryside to kill and eat all the precious, valuable livestock. And this would just not do! So, in response to this, a hero named Caílte mac Rónáin decided he had enough of this sheep murder and recruited fellow hero Cas Corach to take out the were-ladies. Fortunately, Cas had a magical harp that could transform the werewolves into regular humans. This seems like a pretty specific and useful power for a harp to have, given the present werewolf lady epidemic. Caílte mac Rónáin then promptly murdered the transformed ladies with a spear. Yep. That's what he did. Why couldn’t he spear them when they were in werewolf form? I’m not sure. Why couldn't he just reason with them after they had been transformed from werewolves into normal people? I'm also not sure. ALSO... why couldn’t he just reason with the werewolves when they WERE werewolves? That might sound silly to you, but another power/skill of Caílte’s according to the mythology was that he apparently had the ability to talk to animals. None of this makes any damn sense.

2. A Stupid Drinking Game with Corpses Takes a Horrifying & Prophetic Twist

One Samhain night while everyone was drinking and celebrating their fall festival, King Ailill mac Máta of Connachta decided to dare his warriors to tie a wicker bracelet around the ankle of the corpse of a condemned man who was hanged from a nearby tree. Everyone was really scared to do this because it was Samhain, and everyone knew that the dead had power on that night. But someone named Nera, who was suitably drunk enough to think this was a good idea, took King Ailill up on the dare and went to do that. Of course the corpse came to life and it was freaky. But the corpse was like, “Hey man. I’m sort of thirsty. You got some water?” Nera was like, “Sure dead bro. Let me carry you on my back and take you over to this house. I bet they got some water.” But as he walked towards the house, it sprang up into flames. He tried another house, which was then flooded by water. Yeah. This is getting a little like Three Little Pigs, huh? The third house we was able to get into, but when the dead guy drank some water, he spat it out and that spit killed the homeowners. Yikes. Having helped the zombie, Nera quietly walked away from the dead homeowners and took the corpse back towards the tree by the Connachta royal residences. But when he got back he saw that... WHOOPS... While he was gone, everyone had been brutally murdered and beheaded by evil elf/fairies named the Aos Sí (AKA “aes sídhe,” AKA “sìth”… yep, that’s right, sìth), and the whole town was set on fire. When investigating what happened, Nera runs into a sídhe lady (I guess she's a turncoat) who informs him that everything he saw was just a vision of one year in the future. Nera then realizes that no time at all has passed at all and that he’s still back at the hanging corpse before any of this crazy shit happened. He now has time to warn everyone and save the day! So… happy ending? 

1. Aillen the Fire Demon Burns down Tara Every Year

Finn MacCool and his Asbestos shield.

So for 23 straight years on the day of Samhain, this supernatural being named Aillen (AKA “The Burner”) came to Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Using his magical harp (yessir, ANOTHER magical harp), he would play music that lulled everyone, including the king, to sleep. Then when everyone was asleep he would BURN THE ENTIRE TOWN TO THE GROUND. Wow. Brutal. Every year. For 23 years. You'd think that maybe after year six years or something they'd be like, "You know what? Let's NOT rebuild Tara. Let's move somewhere that there is no fire demon who destroys the city." Nope. That never happened. Although in their defense I guess stupid Florida people who live in the Hurricane path essentially do the same dumb shit to this day. Anyway, I digress.... back to the story! The king and his warriors, known as the “Fenians,” could do nothing to stop Aillen. What with the sleep magic and all. Earplugs had not been invented. Finally a dude named Fionn mac Cumhaill (Anglicized as the totally awesome name “Finn MacCool”) showed up with a magical, burning spear and resisted the lulling, sleepy sounds of the harp by constantly burning his own forehead with the scalding spear to keep himself awake. He then killed Aillen with the same spear.  All this was pretty cool (you might even say... MacCool), and something Finn totally shouldn’t have even bothered doing given that the leader of the Fenians was a guy named "Goll mac Morna" who had previously MURDERD HIS FATHER to take control of the Fenians.  But after Finn MacCool did his big “killing the burning demon” trick, Goll was like, “Uh, okay. Sorry about killing your dad. Want to be the new leader?” So… happy ending?