The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1930-10-17

81 there will be unusual
activity among the juvenile population
of the United States of America. Par
ties of them will gather in houses in
which the decorative scheme will in
clude grinning jack-olanterns, dry and
yellowed stalks of corn, black cats,
witches ct cetera. But the principal
activity will be outdoors rather than
indoors. In the cities and towns
white-sheeted figures will roam the
streets, and other figures, lacking any
special costume, will fit furtively
among the shadows in alleys and back
streets. In the country the roads and
lanes will see more night traffic than
usual and dogs will bark at shadowy
fntruders in farm yards.
The next morning merchants in city
and town will find the front windows
of their stores decorated with long
scrawling lines of white-soap put
there, but not to clean the panes.
Gates will be missing from their ac-
customed places, benches and chairs
will have disappeared. water will be
gushing forth from unguarded taps
and in general there will be such
transportation of any object left out
doors by the careless householder as
to cause one to wonder by what
strange magic have hitherto inanimate
things come to life. Farmers, finding
wheels missing from their wagons
hung, perhaps, high up in tree, or
even, perhaps, discovering the wagon
itself perched astride the ridgepole
of the district school-will mutter the
same thing that the merchant is NUT
tering under his breath-"The little
heathensr'
They shouldn't call the children
that, however. "Pagans'' is the word,
rather than 'heathens" For October
81 is Halloween and on that night
young America is throw-back to their
pagan ancestry of thousands of years
ago. For the boys and girls who go
about on Halloween playing pranks
on their elders, even though probably
not one out of a hundred knows it, are
simply keeping alive custom born
in England in the far-off days of the
Druids-with this difference: their
ancestors of ancient days observed
this custom to keep away or propitiate
evil spirits, whereas their descendants
assume the characters of evil spirits,
or at least, mischievous ones, and act
accordingly.
The origin of Halloween goes back
to the respect and homage paid by am
cient nations to the sun. The pagans
of those days, whether Egyptian, Greek
or Roman, assigned place of great
Importance in their pantheon to the
sun god, the giver of light and heat
and life. The sun marked out for
them the time of work and the time
of rest; it divided the year into sea-
sons; it made possible bounteous crops
of grain and fruits and under it's
warming rays fiourished all that was
beautiful and splendidsand wonderful
on this earth.
SO it was only natural that the early
pagan should set aside day of grief
for the ending of summer when his
beauty and splendor declined under
the frosts and winds of the coming
winter, when the earth fell under the
spell of the evil powers and was not
to he free from them again until the
coming of spring. But mingled with
this grief over the passing of summer
was the joy which he felt as he be-
held the golden harvest of the autumn
and in his heart he felt song of
thanksgiving for the ripened grain and
fruit. The deity to whom the Romans
were accustomed to render their
thanks for these gifts was the god
dess, Pomona, and they were accus-
toned to set apart October 81 or No
vember l in her honor as a festival
day in which nuts and apples, repre-
senting the winter store of fruits, fig
ured prominently.
The Celts, the original inhabitants
of the British Isles, worshiped the
spirits of the forests and streams.
Their priests, the Druids, held their
rites beneath the great oaks which are
characteristic of that land, since this
tree was held in special veneration by
the Celts. The Druids in time became
skilled prophets in interpreting the
will of the gods. They kept their
sacred lore from the people and hand
ed it down only among themselves.
They taught that souls were immortal
and that they passed from one body to
another when life became extinct.
On October 81 the Druids taught
that the Lord of Death gathered to-
gether the souls of all those who had
died during the year just passed and
assigned to them bodies of the ami
mails they were to inhabit the coming
twelvemonth, according to their con.
demnation.
Samhain, summers end" was No
yember 1 to the Druids. Flocks were