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Irish Roots Weekly
The Fires and the Faithful: Ireland’s Nights Between Worlds
Irish Roots
November 02, 2025
Welcome back to Irish Roots Weekly
From sacred bonfires to candlelit windowsills, Ireland has long marked the turn from October to November with ritual, memory, and devotion. In these few nights - when the year folds in on itself and the light grows thin - the living and the dead draw close. From Samhain and Halloween through All Saints and All Souls, Ireland still keeps a flame for both sides of the threshold.
Samhain and Halloween – The Veil Between Worlds
🔥 Where Ireland’s year turned to fire.
In the old Irish calendar, Samhain marked winter’s beginning and the turning of the year. The harvest was in, cattle brought home, and the fields left bare under low skies. It was one of the great hinge points of the year - a door between seasons, and for many, between worlds.
Old stories told of Oíche Shamhna, the night when the barrier between the living and the dead thinned to a breath. The mounds at Brú na Bóinne were not graves but gateways, and the Aos Sí - the fairy host, the Good People - were said to ride out from their hollow hills on white horses, their cloaks glinting like moonlight on water. To see them was to risk being taken away into their world.
Fires burned on the hilltops that night - not just for warmth, but for protection and renewal. On the Hill of Ward (Tlachtga) in County Meath, great flames once drew whole communities together. From that fire, each household carried a live ember home to relight the hearth, a small glow against the dark. Food was left out for wandering souls, and no door was locked. It was known, without saying, that the dead might wish to visit.
As time moved on, the customs changed shape but not spirit. Turnips were carved to ward off ill luck, later pumpkins in the new world. Masks and costumes hid faces from passing spirits and made room for mischief. Apples and coins, once tools of divination, became games by the hearth.
By the 1800s, Oíche Shamhna was both holy and hearty. Fires flared in the fields, children ran house to house in disguise, and stories were told late into the night - of the Banshee, the headless Dullahan, or Stingy Jack with his wandering light.
Samhain was never grim. It was honest. It faced death without fear and winter without complaint. It remembered, and it made ready. The laughter, the firelight, the whisper of old tales - all of it helped Ireland step through the dark into the year ahead.
All Saints’ Day – Lá na Naomh Uile
🕯️ Warm light against Ireland’s long November night.
If Samhain turned hearts toward the ancestors, All Saints’ Day, on the first of November, turned them heavenward. The Church made it a day for every saint - known and forgotten - but in Ireland, it felt more like an extension of home. The fire still burned, the candle still shone, and faith was another way of keeping the line unbroken.
Mass was said, bells tolled, and candles glowed in cottage windows. Fishermen’s boats were blessed on the coast, and in hill towns, flowers were left on the resting places of local holy women. Saints like Brigid, Colmcille, and Gobnait were not distant figures - they were kin, woven into Ireland’s long story of earth and spirit.
It was not a day of sadness but of company - the kind that lingers even after a door has closed.
All Souls’ Day – Lá na Marbh
🕯️ Where roads remember, old souls still walk in peace.
If All Saints’ belonged to the blessed, All Souls’ belonged to the rest of us. On the second of November, families went to the graveyards with brushes, lanterns, and jars of chrysanthemums. Moss was cleared, names re-traced, and candles set glowing in the wind.
In parts of Connacht, twelve small lights still burned on the hearth well into the last century - one for every soul the family had lost. Some said the dead returned that night to warm themselves at the fire. Whether or not they did, the gesture mattered. The prayer, the flame, the pause.
There were no grand rituals - just silence, breath, and memory. The creak of the gate, the smell of damp stone, the steady flame in the window. These were Ireland’s prayers, spoken in the plain language of care.
Our bond with the dead was never distant. It was folded into life itself, a quiet understanding that love outlasts the body. Go ndéana Dia trócaire ar a n-anamacha - May God have mercy on their souls - not recited but felt.
Closing Reflection
These nights - Samhain and Halloween, All Saints and All Souls - are Ireland’s season of remembrance, when old faith and older custom walk side by side. They remind us that light is strongest where darkness gathers, and that memory itself is a kind of flame.
To stand at a hearth or graveside, to strike a match and set a candle in the window, is to take part in something that outlives us. It is Ireland’s oldest promise - that no soul is ever alone, and no light is ever truly lost.
And so, as the wind turns cold and the year draws in, Ireland does what she always has: lights the fire, tells the story, and waits for morning.
— Irish Roots Heritage Plus
The Harbinger of Death
Mist rises. Hooves strike. The unseen passes.
As the nights draw in and Samhain nears, we turn to one of Ireland’s oldest and most haunting legends - The Dullahan.
He is not villain nor ghost, but something older - a shadow of fate on the open road, riding between worlds where life meets its echo.
A year’s good fortune
A quiet nod to Halloween nights when a hidden coin foretold the year’s good fortune.
When October’s last light fades and turf smoke rises in the chill, Irish kitchens fill with the scent of boiled cabbage, mashed potatoes, and melting butter. In that humble mixture — steaming, salted, and stirred with care — lies one of Ireland’s oldest comfort foods: colcannon. To many it is simply a side dish, but to generations past it was a meal of memory and meaning, served when harvest ended and winter began.
Atlantic Squalls rise
November’s sea knows the names of the lost
As autumn yields to winter, Ireland’s seas grow dark and unpredictable. November has long been the month of tempests - when Atlantic squalls rise without warning and the coast lives half in dread, half in defiance. “The skies of November turn gloomy,” fishermen would say, for in that month the ocean seemed to reclaim what it had lent through summer’s calm.
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