Mike and I celebrated Samhuinn (pronounced Savane over here), the Celtic New Year's Eve, or Hallowe'en to modern folk, by going on a guided walk of Celtic Holyrood Park, followed by lunch at Scotland's oldest continually operating pub, The Sheep's Heid Inn, and then ghost stories at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in the evening. A good time was had by all.
Holyrood Park is a scheduled ancient monument and is managed by Historic Scotland. One of their rangers led a dozen of us on a walking tour of the park as a Celtic site. On the walk, we learned that there were several hill forts on the Holyrood hills during the Celtic era, the ditch and mounded wall of the enclosure are still clearly visible when you know where to look, as are cultivation terrarces. Apparently the local Celts spoke a variation on Welsh, rather than Irish and cultivated the land as well as raised cattle.
From the hilltops we walked down into the village of Duddingston, now fully absorbed into Edinburgh like Dean Village is. However, they still have their local pub, unlike Dean Village, which has good food and beer: The Sheep Heid Inn.
In the evening we went to the second last night of this year's Scottish International Storytelling Festival, which featured tellers from Canada, the US, Jamaica, New Zealand and Australia. Anne E. Stewart told a true to her mom's life ghost story from Australia. We heard an Iroquois story told by a Cherokee woman, Gayle Ross, about a vampire skeleton--surprisingly similar to European vampire lore. Amina Blackwood Meeks, the woman from Jamaica, told us the story of why donkeys sit down when there is a spirit nearby--it involved donkeys in bowties. We also got the tale of how fire came to the people from a Maori teller, Rangimoana Taylor. A Scottish teller, Grace Banks, told a witch tale, but I find I don't have the stomach to hear stories of burning witches, even when they are fairytales. Earlier in the week we had some classic Quebec stories about the devil from Isabelle Chartrand-Delorme and Melanie Cloutier which would have fit well with the Samhuinn mood as well.
We've been getting reports from Ottawa about numbers of children coming to doors for candy. We weren't home to find out if anyone came along our block here in Edinburgh, but we suspect not.
Happy Celtic New Year everyone.
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