Hallowe'en from the earliest Celtic records, has been the most important and sinister festival of the Celtic year. It was originally celebrated on the night of 1 November and on the following day. Then the whole world was believed to be infested by the gods and spirits of the pagan Celts, and the Otherworld became visible to, and accessible to mankind. The occupants of the supernatural world could mix freely, a privilege fraught with peril for human beings. Originally a Druidic festival, and accompanied as the Irish tales indicate, with human sacrifice and many propitiatory offerings, it remained the most popular of the calendar festivals, and was celebrated with much ritual well into this century. It is still observed vestigially, but the old significance has been lost. Different parts of the Highlands still carry on their own traditional activities, but these are less authentic and varied as the old beliefs and traditional ways of celebrating rapidly disappear. Divining the future by means of nuts, kail plants, dropping egg whites into water and so on, was a regular pursuit, and sometimes the person seeking to know the future would get unexpected and perhaps unwanted answers to the questions asked. The supernatural would really manifest itself, or one of the company would play a trick and make the seeker after future knowledge believe that this was the case. In many districts each house had its own bonfire, samhnag and one house was usually especially popular as a gathering place. In early Celtic tradition, Samhain was closely associated with the burial mounds which were believed to be some of the entrances to the Otherworld; and for this reason, the celebration of Hallowe'en at Fortingall, at the head of Glenlyon in Perthshire, is of especial interest.

The festival itself was observed in a somewhat unusual fashion, being essentially of a communal nature there, apart from anything else, and it continued well into this century. Another unusual feature in this region of the Highlands where so much archaic tradition has been preserved, was the date on which the festival was traditionally held - 11 November. The samhnag 'bonfire', was a communal effort, and it was built on the mound known as Càrn nam Marbb, 'The Mound of the Dead'. Local tradition has it that the mound contains the bodies of victims of a dreadful plague which were brought there and buried by an old woman with a cart or sled pulled by a white horse; the story has a dear supernatural flavour about it, and the mound is, in fact, a Bronze Age tumulus. A stone, known as Clach a' Phlàigb, 'the Plague Stone' crowns the mound. Although people living in the neighbourhood knew of the Fortingall ceremonies, only the local populace seems to have taken part in them. In the other townships the usual individual bonfires were lit, and it was usually the children who built them.

The following account was obtained from a local man who actually took part in the celebrations as a boy. Everybody shared in the preparations which began months before the event. The young people used to go up onto the hill to collect and store great quantities of whin, which was once very plentiful there. This went on night after night. It was finally made into a huge pile with wood shavings and tar barrels added to increase the great conflagration. It was the duty of the older men to actually build the bonfire on the top of the Mound of the Dead. Finally, it was lit, and the whole community took hands when it was blazing and danced round the mound both sunwise and anti-sunwise. As the fire began to wane, some of the younger boys took burning faggots from the flames and ran throughout the field with them, finally throwing them into the air and dancing over them as they lay glowing on the ground. When the last embers were showing, the boys would have a leaping competition across the remains of the fire. When it was finished, the young people went home and ducked for apples and practised divination. The older people went to Fortingall Hotel, an old coaching house, and held a dance there, with much merry-making. There was no 'guising' here, the bonfire being the absolute centre of attention until it was consumed. The last bonfire, made by the community, was lit on the mound in 1924. It is said that this ancient festival was finally destroyed, not only because interest in such things was dying out amongst the young, nor because the people ceased to remember it, but because it was stopped by the keeper who claimed that this great stripping of cover from the hill was interfering with the game there. It is thought locally that the unusual date of Samhain here was due to the fact that the date of the big Fortingall Fèill or Market was held then, and there was some association between the two gatherings. In other places, the ceremony was observed on the traditional date and the activities varied from region to region.

After sunset, in many places, every youth who was able to carry a blazing torch or Sambnag ran out and circuited the boundaries of their farms with these blazing brands in order to protect the family possessions from the fairies and all malevolent forces. Then, having secured their homes in this manner, by the purifying force of the sacred fire, all the households in a township would gather together and participate in the traditional activities. Nuts and apples we regularly used. In the Hebrides the boys dressed up as guisers and went from house to house; much damage to property was done by them on this wild night, gates being removed, carts overturned, a' mischief of every kind indulged in. One means of divining the future was to place six plates on the floor, each with different contents. The girls of the house were blindfolded and led to the spot where the plates were laid down, and the first plate each blindfolded girl touched foretold her fate. Pennant likewise makes mention of the widespread Hallowe'en customs. He says that in his day the young people determine the figure and size of their husbands by drawing cabbages blindfold; and to divine the future, fling nuts into the fire.

When the festival was carried out with complete solemnity, new fire, kindled from the sacred communal fire was brought into each house at Samhain, and it is likely that, like the Beltain fires, the Samain fire was made from tein-èigin, fire made from the friction two pieces of wood. Stones were sometimes placed in the great fire for purposes of divination. Traces of the original orgiastic nature the festival remained in the Highlands until the end of the last century at least. In origin, Samain was clearly a pastoral festival held to assist the powers of growth and fertility, to placate the dead and keep at bay the forces of evil, to please the gods (and later certain saints who had replaced them) with sacrifice, and as a demarcation between the joys of the ingathered harvest, and the hardships of the approaching winter.

These calendar festivals, then, not only provided occasions for religious and superstitious ritual, when the protection of the gods and, later, God and the saints was sought against the count hostile powers; they were times of great relaxation and feasting games and entertainment of every kind, in a society which live( many cases very near to subsistence level, and daily life consisted of heavy toil and labour and utter dependence on the elements their influence on crop and stock, and the vital harvest of the sea.

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