endlessrarities | An All Hallows Eve Special...

It's Hallowe'en tonight, and there's been quite a build-up on Live Journal. Pagans everywhere are celebrating Samhain (I know there's a few of you out there - have a great time, whatever you're doing!). Though I like to think I'm a pagan by inclination, I'm not a big fan of equinoxes - putting such a great emphasis on those owes too much to those new-fangled Iron Age ideas for my liking, thank you, very much.

The day I find much more meaningful ( and which I always think of as 'The Day of the Dead)' is Midwinter, the shortest day, which appears to have been the focus for rituals involving the ancestral dead during the Early Bronze Age. It's easy to see why: it's when the battle between the light and the darkness reaches its most crucial point. The sun dies, but every year without fail, it is reborn.

It must have been a day of incredible significance to our prehistoric ancestors, who meticulously observed the movements of the celestial bodies, but had no way of understanding the forces that guided them. Their preoccupation with this day is seen in a number of important sites, and it's always associated with the dead, and often the ancestral dead. The midwinter sun reveals itself in the 'lightbox' that overlooks the entrance of Newgrange, the entrance of Maes Howe is aligned on the midwinter sunrise, too, and recent research suggests that Stonehenge is also oriented around the midwinter sunrise. That's not to say that the midsummer sunrise wasn't important: perhaps midsummer was a time devoted to celebrating the hopes of the living, while midwinter was the time to remember the achievements of the ancestral dead.

It's on Midwinter day that I raise a glass of red wine to my Ancestral Departed and to the Ancestors in general - this year, I should probably celebrate it with a post devoted to Stonehenge. I've been promising you that for months, I know...

In the meantime, I'll join in the Hallowe'en celebrations with some lovely gravestones. There's a preoccupation with horror and ghoulishness at this time of year: I find this a bit unfair, because I've not yet met a dead person I didn't like. They're not really very good at conversation (I'd be alarmed if they were!), but one thing's for sure: they're very easy to get on with! They never argue, they never talk out of turn, and they never complain about their circumstances!

Spooky reminiscence of the day? A few years back, I was checking out a consignment of late 19th century skellies who'd been unceremoniously chucked out of their graveyard. I was on my own in one of our stores so I switched on the radio to keep me company while I decanted my poor dead (and rather smelly!) friends into their trays. What should be playing but Mozart's Requiem. i thought that was quite appropriate, considering...

Anyway, without further ado, here's some pretty gravestones. They're all late 18th or early 19th century in date, and they can be found in the kirkyard of the parish church of Saint Quivox, in South Ayrshire.

Saint Quivox is a tiny little village which I've often wondered about but never visited during trips down the A77 to Ayr - this year, I finally made the effort to seek it out, and it wasn't disappointing. Its major attraction is the church, which has its origins in the 12th century. The earliest gravestones are much later, dating to the 16th century, but they'll have to wait for another day.

Here's a rather fetching skull on one of the late 18th/early 19th century gravestones:-

And a rather more complicated set of motifs on another:-

A third shows rather a naive figure of a man - this kind of rough-and-ready carving is so typical of the Ayrshire gravestones, and is rather charming. The accompanying tools suggest he may have been a gardener:-

And lastly, I give to you the jewel of the Saint Quivox kirkyard, a lovely carving of Adam and Eve:-

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone! And remember - it's not the dead you should be afraid of tonight, it's the living!

I sometimes wish the dead would come out of their graves and remonstrate with all those thoughtless oiks who kick over gravestones, break into mausolea and chuck the bones around, etc;. I've heard of so many cases of it through the years - it makes me very angry on their behalf!!!