Samhain
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and all,
Fire and sleet and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.
The Lyke-Wake Dirge, folk song
in Yorkshire dialect
This song was beautifully performed by Pentangle, with Jacqui McShee’s sublime soaring voice and perfect diction.
Samhain (Sauin in Manx) is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic name for November.
The festival of Samhain begins at sunset on October 31st, to mark the end of harvest and the beginning of winter.
It is said that the veil between life and death is at its thinnest on this sacred night. The spirits of the dear departed may visit their homes and in some cases, places are set at table for them.
It is common to speak of dying as passing away. Maybe it is not simply an anodyne way of referring to something distressing, but a reference to Samhain. It is comforting, for those who do not robustly deny such beliefs as outdated nonsense, to think that souls slip from one realm to another through the sheerest curtain.
‘Pass’ meaning ‘die’ has been used since the beginning of the fourteenth century and was used in that sense by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) and later by Shakespeare (1564-1616)
‘Passing away’ came into the common lexicon in the fifteenth century. The belief then was that a person’s soul remained until the funeral rites were completed, after which it could ‘pass away.’