“Needin’ ony guisers?” we’d ask the tenant of the house. Three or four of us kids…none recognisable (or so we thought!) in our Hallowe’en dress-up. Most would say “Aye, right…c’m in…” and we’d enter the house. Then we’d stand there, a bit awkward, pushing and shoving each other to determine who would begin the party pieces required before we were given our treat. This was Scotland of the ’50’s (and many years before) as I was growing up. Not for us the fancy, bought costumes of here, or even today in Scotland which seems to have adopted more of the American traditions.
Days before Mum would buy the neep (turnip) the likes of which I’ve yet to see here! Our turnips are BIG…not as big as pumpkins but certainly large enough to scoop out and insert a household candle. Faces would then be carved into the neep and a hole punched in each side through which Dad would thread a length of strong twine, fashioning a carry handle. Jack O’ Lantern to light our way round the neighbours. Imagine…our parents sent us out to roam around for two-three hours carrying fire! And we survived! I remember wearing the same costume for several years…mostly because we had it, I wasn’t much into dressing up and this particular ‘costume’ I had a great fondness for. One of Dad’s dress shirts…and old one, of course!…known today as a Grandfather shirt. The kind that is collarless…then it wasn’t a fashion statement. Men wore their older ones to work without a collar, the new ones…for ”dress” or Sundays had to have a stiff collar attached with studs. I wore a striped shirt, no collar. A friend of my mother’s had served in Egypt during the war and brought her home a genuine fez…dark red with a black tassle…and she let me wear that with the shirt, completing the look of what we thought was an Egyptian of the bazaars. For the life of me I can’t remember what she used to draw a mustache above my lip…nice handlebar, too…might have been an eyebrow pencil but I doubt that since mother never wore make-up. I was ready for the off! And I really liked the ‘look’…today it might just get me on the Homeland Security List of wanteds (the youngest, at that) but I thought it was cool and different from the others. It’s worth mentioning at this point (though maybe I shouldn’t!) our guisin’ (dis-guise) was a several evenings affair. Not just one night for an hour. Each of us had to have a party piece…a joke, song, riddle, poem…to offer whomever invited us in and only when we had each performed did we get our “treats”. An apple, orange but usually any type of change from a penny to thruppenny bit (a piece of coinage long gone from our monetary system). Sometimes the householder would have us ‘dook for aipples” (dunking for apples), some had scones dripping with treacle (molasses) hanging by string from the ceiling which we had to catch in the same manner as dookin’…hands behind back, no assist. Messy, messy, messy…and sticky! Still…often helped with the cosmetology…or lack, thereof. There were people who neither wanted or ‘needed’ guisers and that was okay. We knew nothing about ‘tricking’…no egging, no TP’ing, nothing of that sort. At least not then. Other times of the year the neighbourhood boys found great joy in playing Chicky Melly…ringing doorbells, banging door knockers and beating feet before the door was answered but never at Hallowe’en do I recall tricks…’treats’ were the focus.
Like many things, now I believe it has become too commercialised, there is still fun but a bit more materialistic…only my opinion. I sure don’t look forward to Hallowe’en as I did then…LOL…but, one thing. I am so glad I no longer have to do a turn these days (perform). The one thing I hated…having to stand before adults or peers and go solo with a poem, riddel, song. And these people we’d visit always threatened there would be no penny if we didn’t. I don’t think customs are the same these days, at home. My sister was telling me the other day that she had just bought a carved pumpkin for her young grandchildren…think that’s what set me on a trip down memory lane. And recently we had been talking about the fez…or I had…and she tells me she still has it. Geez, wish I’d known…maybe if I’d had her send it on I would have, for the first time since I was ten, been willing to wear a costume again. Besides the costume, though…the thing I most loved about it was the unique smell of candle wax on turnip flesh. Nothing like it…nope, not even the same thing on a pumpkin. Oh and the meals for days afterwards…regardless, everything accompanied by mashed neep and tatties!! Yum!
Hmmm…think today I have to check SuperFresh or Teeters to find a neep. Won’t be big enough for a candle but could add a delight to dinner.
