16.10.24 – apple rituals and burning the reekie mehr

in the garden

Four golden Manx Codlin apples have been rolling around the kitchen table for a couple weeks now, waiting to get baked into a cake. They were the sole fruits taken from my dwarf tree, which dropped a couple others to the slugs before I could save them. When I make the cake, I will probably put the leftover cores into a pot of gently steaming cloudy apple juice, along with a cinnamon stick, star anise, and cloves, in an attempt recreate the mulled apple cider of my New England youth. (In the US, unlike the UK, cider is not alcoholic unless it is “hard”.) The Proustian effect, though, is double: on one side, the Ur-cider, opaque and brown, so tart and sweet and sharp, bright when ice cold and mellowly spiced when mulled, the ultimate distillation of New England apple culture; and on the other side, the transparent amber of Mott’s apple juice, bought by my mum in gallons at the Rhein-Main Air Force Base commissary, warmed in our biggest pot with spices and supplementary apple slices, ladled into mugs throughout the day to make us feel closer to home in an unfamiliar place.

I have spent more of my life missing New England in the autumn than I’ve spent living it, so I’m well-versed now at going through the rituals of autumn celebration in bemused isolation. The UK does not “do” autumn, despite experiencing the same darkening days and cooling weather. At least, not beyond corporate gimmicks like pumpkin-spiced lattes and the occasional imported practice of pumpkin picking. (Though big shout out to my local bakery A. Pastry for their happily festive October special, which did zhuzh me up!) The result, in my experience, is a sad and bland descent into darker months without anything except Christmas to look forward to. And people do look forward to it, far outside the acceptable timeframe, to the point where someone I saw on social media recently was listening to Christmas tunes just to get a bit of cheer in this unbearably dreary political climate.

It makes me absolutely ache with homesickness for the way New Englanders do autumn, with their autumn-themed flags on the porch, decorative cornstacks and scarecrows, pumpkin picking, apple picking, knobbly gourds, pumpkin- and apple-pie scented candles, apple cider and cider donuts from local farms at their roadside stands, apple pie/cobbler/crumble/crisp, apple butter, apple-pie ice cream, on and on. Halloween is folded in with giant lawn skeletons and roof-spiders that get left out nearly to Thanksgiving, which prolongs the harvest vibe with turkey and pumpkin themed décor right through to the end of November. Culturally, you cannot help but know where you are in the turning of the year, or fail to feel grateful for the produce specific to this time and place. The nights are longer, yes, but there is warm cider on the stove. The cold is creeping in but there is a fortifying sense of ritual about preparing house and garden for the winter weather.

This week, in this house, we are doubling down on autumn celebration despite everything in my body asking what the bloody point is in the midst of a polycrisis, when I wake up to images of children shot in the head and people burning alive on my timeline (his name was Shaban Al-Dalou and he was 19 years old), and frightening new statistics about the carbon that the earth has not absorbed, or the percentage of animal populations lost in the last 50 years, and apocalyptic damage done by hurricanes and floods that are direct results of colossal fossil fuel use and the decisions of just a few billionaires. The point is, it’s important to ground myself in rituals of appreciation that make me very present with the beauty that still exists, so I can carry on resisting. The point is, I am trying to be very mindful of every harvest that makes my life possible, and the land workers whose labour fills me up and clothes me. The point is, the apples are very crisp, the queen bees need good leafy, messy, undisturbed places in which to go to sleep, and the pumpkins are all very round and generous.

If you have funds to spare:

My friend Eilidh Weir is raffling off this beautiful wall hanging in support of two families (fundraising pages here and here) and a community organisation in Gaza. A £5 donation to one or all of the people listed is all that’s needed to enter, and every additional £5 counts as another entry. Then, send your screenshot donation receipts via DM to @allthatisbraw on Instagram or via email youare@allthatisbraw.uk.

My friend

Gayla Trail

is sharing a printable PDF of this gorgeous cross-stitch pattern to every person who sends her receipts for $5 sent to any Palestinian family or aid organisation. However, her DMs on her yougrowgirl handle aren’t working at the mo, so you can leave a comment on her post or message her on her gaylatrail handle.

People in western North Carolina still need help after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene; it will take years for infrastructure and homes to be rebuilt. My fellow Bennington alums Sylvan Esso and Daughter of Swords are featured on this compilation playlist made to support flood relief efforts. You can also donate directly to North Carolina organisations like Beloved Asheville, Rural Organising and Resilience, and Triangle Mutual Aid.

in the past

Scottish writer Florence Marian McNeill is best known for her 1929 classic The Scots Kitchen, arguably the most important text on the history of Scottish food and its huge regional variations, recorded at a time when it was still possible to interview elders who remembered an earlier way of life before the rapid onset of 20^th century industrialisation.  (For an excellent look into her life and the state of regional Scottish food, I heartily recommend this piece by Robbie Armstrong in Vittles.) But this was not her only contribution to the history of Scottish culture; far less known and just as vital a text is her four-volume study of Scottish folklore, beliefs, and seasonal and regional festivals, The Silver Bough. Published between 1957 and 1968, the first volume broadly covers some history of Scottish folk-lore and its intermingling of Christian beliefs and earlier pagan faiths, while the latter three volumes detail these traditions through folklore, superstition, and festival rituals. (I believe that, in normal times, the full text can be accessed via the Internet Archive, but the archive is currently recovering after a cyber attack.)

The third volume includes festival traditions and folklore around Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced Sow-wen). Unlike today’s comparatively paltry rituals of guising (trick-or-treating) with plastic buckets, fast-fashion costumes, and limited selection of candy (another US-UK difference that astounds me, but I know too much about the cocoa industry now to wish it were different here!), Halloween across Scotland was once a rich holdover of earlier harvest festival rites and remembrance of the dead. Lanterns were not made from pumpkins (a continental American fruit) but from turnips (the swede type), and bonfires were built to “burn the witches”, an early modern misogynistic representation of discouraging powers of darkness.

It might be surprising to us now, but brassicas played a large role in many Halloween rites and superstitions. McNeill mentions at least three:

The first is called “pulling the kail-runt”:

“Hand-in-hand, a band of young girls go out in the dark to the kail-yard, where, either blindfolded or with eyes shut, each pulls up the first kail-runt (cabbage stalk) she touches. In Orkney, the girls go ‘backlins’ into the kail-yard and pull the first kail-runt on which they happen to strike their heel. In Fife, the kail-runts are carried home backwards. The size—large or small, stout or lean—and the shape—straight or crookit—indicate the appearance of the future spouse; as the ‘custock’ or heart proves sweet or sour, so will be his disposition; and according as there is much or little ‘yird’ (earth) adhering, so with the tocher or dowry be large or small. Knots under the adhering earth denote that there will be no children. After examination, the runts are placed over the lintel of the outside door, and the Christian name of the first man or woman to enter will be the Christian name of the future husband or wife.”

In his 1785 poem “Halloween”, Robert Burns narrates this particular ritual as it might have played out in his native Ayrshire. McNeill adds that, in some places, the kail-runt pulled from the kailyard could be placed under one’s pillow, in order to induce dreams of the spouse it had divined.

The second ritual was a mischief-making exercise in which young lads, wearing masks, went from house to house puffing smoke through key-holes with a kind of rail-runt pipe. In Moray, it was known as “burning the reekie mehr”, and McNeill provides a recipe for recreation:

“Take a cabbage or kail stock, scoop out the centre, and fill the hollow with tow. (This is the ‘mehr.’ ‘Reekie,’ of course, means smokie.) Choose your scene of action: then set fire to one end of the mehr, apply the lighted end to the key-hole of a door, blow lustily at the other end, and you will send a column of smoke into the house. When you tire of this, climb up to the roof and stop the chimney with turf, thus turning back the smoke. It is advisable to have a rope handy for a speedy descent.”

The third ritual involved using a kail-runt as a simple torch. McNeill writes,

“Although in some parts of the Highlands the young men and women still go guising, elsewhere the practice has passed almost entirely into the hands of the children. As soon as it is dark, small, fantastically-garbed figures, wearing grotesque masks, emerge from their homes, carrying turnip lanterns or kail-runt torches; and, forming into little groups or processions, they pass through the village street singing one of their traditional rhymes: --

Hallowe’en! A nieht o’ tine!

A can’le in a custock!

Or perhaps

Heigh Ho for Hallowe’en,

When the fairies a’ are seen,

Some black and some green,

Heigh Ho for Hallowe’en!

She does not provide instructions for making a kail-runt torch, but a version of it can be seen in Richard Waitt’s 1731 portrait, The Cromartie Fool. The National Galleries website explains, “This grinning man holds a kail stock with a burning candle stuck in the top. This helps identify him as the ‘fool’ or jester of a Scottish laird, who probably presided over Halloween festivities, such as those described in Robert Burns’ poetry.”

The Cromartie Fool (1731) by Richard Waitt

As I am happily partnered and do not fancy blowing smoke through my neighbours’ keyholes, I am most excited to try my hand at a kail-runt torch. Disappointingly, it will have to wait for next year, as my kales were hard-hit by slugs this season and I don’t have stalks thick enough. If you do, though, and you make a kail-runt torch or even a reekie mehr, send me photos!