Although today we largely associate bonfire night with November 5th (this has been the date used for bonfire building for the last 400 years since Guy Fawkes tried unsuccessfully to blow up the houses of parliament), the tradition of bonfires is much older and has its roots in the old traditions of Samhain (which were later incorporated into the Christian Calandar as Hallowe’en or All Hallows Eve which was covered in an earlier blog.
The festival of Samhain celebrated the end of summer and the start of the dark season of winter. This was also the end of the old year and the start of the new year, to mark this event house fires were extinguished on November 1st. The previous day young people from the villages would travel around the community collecting kindling for the bonfire and offerings of food (which were later renamed Soul Cakes see our earlier blog)
A huge bonfire would be built with the wood collected from the villagers to honour the gods on the sacred place (usually on a high spot or hill top). Once the fire had been lighted the people would make offerings of animal bones and crops to the gods by throwing these items onto the fires (this was known as the ‘bone fire’ which we now know as a bonfire.) Animal bones would be plentiful as many animals were culled and the meat preserved at this time of year, it was easier to cull the herd than to feed it through the winter. Other more personal offerings were also made to the fire.
During the celebration of Samhain it was believed that both good and evil spirits could walk freely from the spirit world to our world. In order to drive away the evil spirits people dressed in animal skins and heads to drive away the evil spirits from the village, the disguise would also protect the wearer who would not be recognised by the evil spirit whilst wearing such a disguise. As long as people stayed close to the sacred fires they were also thought to be safe from evil spirits.
As the huge bonfire died it was considered lucky to take a glowing ember from the bonfire and use it to relight the family hearth in the cottage, the easiest way to transport these burning embers and stop them being extinguished was to use a hollowed out turnip (this custom is still celebrated as Punky night in some parts of the UK, but on 25th October the date of Samhain in the old calendar) See our earlier blog for more details. These turnips were often carried by the younger members of the family who had carved faces on the turnips to scare away evil spirits.
The following day once the bonfire had burned down and cooled the ashes were spread on the fields to protect the crops against evil spirits who might cause the crops to fail. Little did they know these ashes also promoted good crop growth the following years as they acted as a fertiliser on the fields.