Halloween is coming...

Our Irish Affairs contributor, Maurice Neill, the author of the 'Irish Tales' collection available to subscribers on www.williamlongbooks.co.uk, has sent in a new tale for our Linkedin followers.

‘HALLOWEEN is coming and the goose is getting fat,

Please put a penny in the old man’s hat,

If you haven’t got a penny a ha’penny will do,

If you haven’t got a ha’penny,

God bless you.’

The witches in the porch were all giggles and painted faces. They carried a huge pumpkin lantern with a fat candle which flickered little patches of orange light and spooky shadows against their flimsy homemade outfits. The little dog wagged its tail frantically and barked. It wore a pair of red plastic horns. Beulah opened the inside door and smiled as she pulled her woolly cardigan tight around her waist. She offered the smallest of the witches a baking bowl filled with all kinds of forbidden delights, parma violets, black jacks, fruit gums, penny chews, drumsticks, licorice comfits, firemen’s hoses and hard, sugary lollipops. There were squeals of delight, a scramble of tiny hands, a flutter of fake nails, then the coven fled into the night. The tallest of the visitors wore a long green nose which stuck out below a pointed Wicked Witch of the West hat. He said ‘thanks missus’ and galloped off on an old fashioned besom. Beulah laughed. She called after him, “You’re welcome Evilene.” She hadn’t seen any witches for years and was pretty sure the polite child had never heard of the Wizard of Oz. Nobody believed in witchcraft anymore. Zombies and vampires were the children’s favourites these days. They aped what they saw on television. They did not learn from the old ones. Last year she opened the door to The Incredible Hulk and Skeletor and had to ask who they were. Halloween had changed a lot since she was a child. The shops were full of cheap plastic rubbish from the minute the schools went back and all along the street windows were decorated with fake cobwebs and ghostly faces. It was as if there was a competition to see who could produce the spookiest house. Some of the displays were quite gruesome. She thought they were too much for the little children. She was sure her neighbours called her an old fuddy-duddy but she was a child once and knew that children could be easily scared by things they did not understand. So could grown-ups. Beulah went to close the outside door against the cold night air. Dry leaves rustled down the driveway, as if something sinister was coming. Blackie the cat slipped in and stroked herself against her mistress’s legs. A cheap rocket whizzed across the rooftops and burst with a bang in a shower of yellow and green sparks. Somewhere a dog howled in protest.

Still, Beulah loved Halloween. She’d loved it since she was a little girl in Ballycarry where their old farmhouse looked out over Larne Lough. Her mother always made rhubarb pie with a hidden sixpence wrapped in greaseproof paper. She served it with ice cream and raspberry sauce which they pretended was blood. They always hosted a party for her friends and played spooky games. There were no pumpkins so they made lanterns from turnips. They drank cream soda, ate sugary fudge and dooked for apples in a basin. The children chased each other around the garden with sparklers and watched from the kitchen window as her father lit roman candles. He nailed Catherine wheels to a hawthorn tree and set them hissing and spinning. It never seemed to rain and the long night was filled with the sound of bangers and rockets from the village nearby. For days the air was filled with the reek of cordite. Her mother liked to tell the story of the Islandmagee witches and how a wicked girl from Scotland, called Mary Dunbar, lied about them because she wanted to be famous. The eight poor girls were placed in the stocks where people taunted them and threw rotten eggs in their faces. One girl lost an eye. They were put in jail for a year then driven out of their homes by ignorant and superstitious people. Her mother always finished by saying, “But that was a long time ago and there were more good witches than bad ones.” The Troubles spoiled it all. There were no more fireworks and making mischief around the doors was frowned upon. Children were told to stay indoors because it was not safe on the streets. There was a look of fear in people’s eyes, fear of real terror and there was evil every day, all year round. But that was a long time ago and there were more good people than bad ones.

Beulah closed the doors and bolted them for the night. It was getting too late for any more callers, even the boldest ones. She returned to the kitchen to finish making a pot of soup. Her mother’s recipe for broth called for a whole chicken to be simmered for an hour with a handful of pearl barley. The carcass was then removed from the stock and stripped of its soft flesh which was chopped into cubes and returned to the pot with handfuls of freshly washed parsley, carrots, leeks, celery and peas. She liked to add lots of good sea salt and coarse black pepper. Fat was carefully spooned form the top of the liquid and it was simmered for another hour before it was allowed to go cold. Her mother said women had been making broth that way for centuries. It was just one of many things passed down from the old ones.

Beulah plonked down in her sofa and jabbed a thumb on the television remote control. Blackie jumped up beside here and demanded attention. She stroked her ears and ran her slender fingers along her long tail. The listings said the film at 10.30pm was a ‘modern halloween shocker’. On the news there was a reminder that the clocks should go back an hour. Beulah placed a finger from her left hand upon her left temple and gazed at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

All around the house, hands on clocks spun back one hour.

? Maurice Neill 2020