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Halloween in Stromness
Running about with a 4-litre tub of treacle-based goo is difficult when you’re trying to keep your pointy black hat and bag of sweeties and pennies safe. Slick some sticky batter on lamp posts, smear margarine under car door handles, sprinkle flour over cats: Halloween in my home town is fun indeed.
This is militant trick-or-treatery – we’ll knock on your door, get the goodies then besmirch your weekend DIY anyways with our mixtures and packets of goo. It’s called devilment and in Stromness at least it’s three-pronged. We have our costumes and songs (an import from America), our sinister devilment, and our neepy lanterns – turnips carved into heads then impaled on sticks.
I’ve been looking into devilment and have come up with a very interesting origin from which it seems to have been derived. In the olden days…us Orkney folk were a supersitious bunch. Still to this day, we don’t take to compliments – they embarrass us. Seems though, in years gone by, compliments scared us were they not accompanied by a qualifier like ‘God save you’. Had you said to me, 'mercy Christine, that’s a bonny wart ye’ve got on yer chin' and not blessed me, you would have spoken to me with an ill tongue and I would’ve been considered forespoken. To rectify this, I have to be essentially ‘de-hexed’ by drinking & being sprinkled with a magic potion – called forespoken water.
This was made by taking a quantity of water and dropping into it three stones gathered from the shore. These had to be of different colours – the most powerful being black then white then red, blue and green. Over this stony solution was recited:
'In the name of him that can cure or kill,
The water shall cure all earthly ill,
Shall cure the blood and flesh and bone,
For ilka ane there is a stone;
May she fleg all trouble, sickness, pain,
Cure without & cure within,
Cure the heart, and horn and skin.'
Then I would be cured!
This superstition though was extended on Allhallows when the forespoken water was taken and daubed in signs of the cross on buildings, kye, boats etc., to ensure success and properity. To me it seems that when we kids ran around with out tubs of sticky mess, clarting doors and windows, we were merely carrying on this ancient tradition. I was never meant to do such things, but thanks to the bad influence of some of my friends, I deviated form the righteous path and ran about being as evil as the best kids were that night – blessing all the folks of lovely Stromness town.
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