Trickster on the Threshold: An Interpretation of Children's Autumn Traditions

Abstract

boy was sitting with a guy. A girl was running round with a turnip lantern saying, 'Spare a penny for the Guy, mister?' Is Hallowe'en now merging with Bonfire Night?' The answer to that question apparently is yes, although whether this is a new development and whether children would agree that two really different things are 'merging' are additional questions that should be asked. Perhaps Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes activities have always been connected, in the eyes of children, and the assigning of definite dates to one or the other kind of activities has resulted more from adults' rage for order than from the thoughts and practices of children. Indeed, some evidence already discussed elsewhere, and much more to follow in this essay, suggests that children perceive a single, more or less coherent season of events, rather than separate days of Hallowe'en (October 31) and Bonfire Night (November 5).2 This may be the most important insight resulting from the questionnaire on autumn traditions administered to 649 Sheffield schoolchildren in the autumn of 1981.3 If it is true, it forces a reconsideration of the nature and function of two of the most universally pbserved events in the English folk calendar. Some evidence that children tend to merge the Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes traditions has already appeared in the published work of other folklorists. Ernest W. Marwick, in writing about children in Kirkwall, Orkney, observes that there they solicit money and use turnip lanterns at any time during the seven or ten days preceding November 5.4 Similarly, the Opies report the use of Hallowe'en turnip lanterns on Mischief Night, November 4, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and cite the Castleford boy who said that the faces on the turnip lanterns represent 'the men who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.' The Opies conclude that 'in some places Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes celebrations have become entangled.' But to call this a 'confusion' of traditions, as the Opies do, may be to force adults' taxonomy upon the perceptions of child participants, the true authorities on the matter.5 My earlier essays have offered abundant additional evidence that the Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes traditions are indeed linked in the experience of those who participate in