Memories of Halloween

yes Marelli we did lol...wow!!! yes nearly a year ago! where on earth has the year gone! (must have been a good one to remember it lol)

.....did we not have a Halloween Party last year, biker? Crikey, it doesn't seem like a year, does it?

I live about 10 mins drive from PENDLE HILL..!! whoooooooo spooooooky....lol

Like baubles, we went 'guising'. We blackened our faces with soot from the back of the fire, lots of lipstick on our lips and cheeks and put on a variety of dressing-up clothes. We went round knocking on the neighbours' doors and without fail, were asked in to give some sort of performance - usually a poem, song or joke. We were given sweets or pennies and sent on our way (quite smartish, if I remember rightly)!

We had bobbing for apples in a tin bath but the favourite game involved soda scones dipped in treacle and hung from the 'pulley' in the kitchen. Blindfolded children tried to get a bite from a scone but usually ended up covered in treacle.

We went 'guising' in little groups round our neighbours doors, everyone had to say their rhyme or sing a song for which we were given a few nuts or an apple. It was such fun deciding on our costumes, all made from old clothes and whatever we could scrounge from our mothers.

My mother is Irish too absent and I think she found these Scottish customs very odd.

I have no memories of Halloween as a child. It just didn't happen in my family, although my mother was Irish. Come to think of it, it might have been because she was Irish. When I was at university we used to tell blood chilling stories to each other late at night on Halloween, while scoffing quantities of toasted crumpets and mugs of hot chocolate.

Thanks for your memories. Interesting to hear from you all. I never remember "bobbing" for apples when I was a child though I did it with my own children. Probably our parents wouldn't think of "wasting" good apples. When I see all the Halloween tat in the shops I feel sad for more innocent times where money (other than buying monkey nuts and sweets) was not involved.

ps wisewoman...we carried a candlelit Neep...ie turnip

Guising..dressed in fancy dress, out alone, we knocked on doors. if asked in which was usually always the case we had to sing for our pennies.......

It was called Tucking Apple night in our house, we had an old basin for our apple bobbing and apples hanging on strings, no one dressed up , but we did have toffee apples for prizes..

Yes, turnips not pumpkins in the West Midlands. We didn't really celebrate Hallowe'en at all. Someone had a party one year and I remember apple bobbing and ghost stories just that once. We didn't have trick or treating but we did have 'Mischief Night'. I say 'we' but I was never allowed out at night!