Samhain/All Hallow’s Eve Soul Cake

The Soul Cake is part of traditional Samhain/All Hallows Eve festivities in the British Isles. 

The cakes are flat and round, scented with saffron, mixed spices and currants.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries children would go ‘souling’ on Samhain (All Hallow’s Eve), All Saints’ Day (Nov 1) and All Souls’ Day (Nov 2) where they would request alms or soul cakes with the following song:

“A soul, a soul, a soul cake.

Please god missus a soul cake.

An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,

Any good thing to make us merry.

Up with your kettles and down with your pans

Give us an answer and we’ll be gone

Little Jack, Jack sat on his gate

Crying for butter to butter his cake

One for St Peter, two for St Paul,

Three for the man who made us all.”

In earlier times the poor would go to prosperous houses, offering to say prayers for departed loved ones. In return, they were given these round cakes and sometimes food and money as well. 

Soul Cakes are a wonderful example of a Pagan tradition that made it’s way into Christianity virtually unscathed. 

If you’ve never made them before, they are absolutely delicious. Here is my favorite recipe for Soul Cakes. 

They freeze well so you can make them ahead!

Soul Cakes

For the dough:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, ground fresh if possible

1 teaspoon cinnamon, ground fresh if possible

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 tsp of saffron

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup raisins (or currants if you are able to get them)

For the Glaze:

1 egg yolk, beaten

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the flour, the nutmeg, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl. 

Mix well with a fork.

Crumble the saffron threads into a small saucepan and heat over low heat just until they become aromatic, taking care not to burn them. 

Add the milk and heat just until hot to the touch. 

The milk will have turned a bright yellow. 

Remove from heat.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a medium bowl with a wooden spoon (or use an electric mixer with the paddle attachment). 

Add the egg yolks and blend in thoroughly with the back of the spoon. 

Add the spiced flour and combine as thoroughly as possible; the mixture will be dry and crumbly.

One tablespoon at a time, begin adding in the warm saffron milk, blending vigorously with the spoon. 

When you have a soft dough, stop adding milk; you probably won’t need the entire half-cup.

Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and knead gently, with floured hands, until the dough is uniform. 

Roll out gently to a thickness of 1/2 inch. 

Using a floured 2-inch round cookie or biscuit cutter, cut out as many rounds as you can and set on an ungreased baking sheet. 

You can gather and re-roll the scraps, gently.

Brush the souls cakes liberally with the beaten egg yolk.  

Add currants in the shape of a cross and press them firmly into the dough.  

Bake for 15 minutes, until just golden and shiny.

Makes 12 to 15 cakes

Vampires

Apparently, the remains of a real 15th-century 'vampire' who was decapitated to stop him rising from the dead have been found in a medieval fortress in Croatia.

Račeša, the headquarters of the Knights Templar 70 miles (112km) southeast of Zagreb, is the site of more than 180 burials, but there’s one that stands out as particularly unusual.

The belief in blood-sucking vampires dates back to pre-Christian times.

In Slavic countries like Croatia, Dr Šarkić says that people strongly believed in the existence of vampires for hundreds of years.

For example, we have Jure Grando Alilović, a Croatian villager who died in 1656, and is described as a vampire in historical records.

Neighbouring Serbia has another example – Petar Blagojević, who died in 1725, and whose body was staked through the heart, and burnt as a suspected vampire.

Archaeologists have found several 'vampire' burials in Poland including the body of an 18-year-old girl pinned to her grave with a sickle and a padlock to prevent her returning.

Since vampires were believed to be nearly indestructible forces of evil, medieval people took extreme measures to prevent them from returning.

That’s why precautions were taken to prevent the transmutation of the newly dead into vampires.

The notion of blood-sucking vampires goes back thousands of years and was common in many ancient cultures, where tales of the undead was rampant.

Archaeologists recently found 3,000 Czech graves, for example, where bodies had been weighed down with rocks to prevent the dead returning from their tombs.

Then Christianity only fuelled the vampire legends even more, for they were considered the antithesis of Christ — spirits that rose from the dead bodies of evil people.

Such vampires would stalk the streets in search of others to join the sucking of lifeblood from humans and animals to survive.

In medieval times, when the Church was all-powerful and the threat of eternal damnation fueled superstition among the peasantry community, already cursed by the Black Death, the fear of vampires was widespread.

In some cases, the dead were buried with a brick wedged in their mouths to stop them rising up to eat those who had perished from the plague.

Records show that in the 12th Century on the Scottish Borders, a woman claimed she was being terrorised by a dead priest who had been buried at Melrose Abbey only days earlier.

When the monks uncovered the tomb, they claimed to have found the corpse bleeding fresh blood. The corpse of the priest, well known for having neglected his religious duties, was burned.

Dia De Los Muertos - Day of the Dead

Catrina (above photo) has come to symbolize not only El Día de los Muertos and the Mexican willingness to laugh at death itself, but originally Catrina was an elegant or well-dressed woman, rich person. 

She serves as a reminder that death brings a neutralizing force; everyone is equal in the end. 

Trick or Treat

 

Historians trace trick-or-treating to a few different ancestors. 

One is the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the transition to the new year, and the end of the harvest and beginning of the winter. 

The ancient Celts believed that during this night, the realms of the living and the dead overlapped and that spirits both good and bad could walk among the living. 

To confuse and ward off the evil spirits, the Celts would sometimes impersonate them with costumes of white clothing and masks or blackface. 

If they encountered a spirit during the feast, the costumed Celts would be mistaken for spirits and left alone.

As Christianity began to influence in the British, the old Pagan customs were Christianized and adapted to help sooth the Celts’ conversion. 

Three Christian holidays—All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, together known as Hallowmas—were placed on the same days as Samhain. 

All Hallow’s Eve eventually got shortened to Hallowe'en, and then Halloween, in conversation.

 

Going around the neighborhood for treats is most likely a form of souling, which started in the Middle Ages, also in the British Isles. 

Soulers, mostly children and some poor adults, would go to door to door during Hallowmas and collect food or money in return for prayers said for the dead on All Souls’ Day. 

A secular version of souling, called guising, eventually sprang up and is first recorded in Scotland in the 19th century. 

Guisers went door to door and earned food treats or money by offering a small performance, like telling a joke or singing a song. 

Some accounts of both these traditions make note of “fantastic costumes” that borrowed both from Samhain and British mummery. 

(They also mention soulers and guisers carrying vegetable lanterns, precursors to the jack-o’-lantern.)