All that is not Holy

Last Saturday evening, returning late from a short trip to Englandshire, I found Auld Reekie full of revellers; adults up to nae guid, pretending to be children, or scary, or sober (not.)  It was a premature celebration of tonight’s shenanigans which, like everything else these days, have been eclipsed by commercialism and alcohol.

I always considered Halloween as American as popcorn and pumpkins (I blame Charlie Brown.)  But hold on: the Scots invented ‘guising’ long before ‘trick-or-treat;’ we have apple-dooking, not bobbing; we have neeps, not pumpkin. And thanks to The Bard,  ‘Of brownyis and bogillis’ we have the greatest haunted tale in the book.

But Hallowe’en (ooh, hallo apostrophe), the Eve of All Saints, was stolen from The Church – which probably stole it from some other pagan rite in its turn.

Something I miss, now that I no longer perform the church’s daily office (liturgical, not administrative) is singing some of the most extraordinary poetry each day.  The Psalms contain an incredibly rich palette of images and beautiful language, in which one gets to sing, in plainsong, chant or hymnody, about things like how a man ‘delighteth not in any mans legs, nor in the pleasure of an horse.’

A favourite of mine is the 59^th, in which the heathen ‘Grin like a dog and go about the city.’  This gives any organist an opportunity to paint the words with whatever strange registration they have available.  I thought of this line when I saw (in the Museum of Scotland – where else!) the fabulous wrought iron dog, a boot-scraper, designed by the iron-mongers, Haddons of Murrayfield. And this is the sestude I wrote in response.

Mischief

Scrape of their feet on the grate,

squeak of a gate, rattle of chains;

a clattering heralds their motley state.

They stand in shop-bought deceit,

fake-blood-stained sheets; piercing through

eye-holes announce: Trick or Treat.

Lacking either, I set the dog on them.

Petrified, he turns to stone; frozen, grins

with wrought-iron fear, inane or immune.

So they wipe their feet with him.