The Jane deLacey Chronicles - Chapter Eight

HALLOWE'EN WITH JANE

"What are you going to be for Hallowe’en, Jane?”  Nellie O’Malley was sitting in the kitchen with Jane deLacey, having milk and cookies.  Jane had not always lived with the other girls in the Big House by the Park, but had been supratemporally transmigrated there from her home in Sixteenth Century England, and she was still learning about the Twentieth Century.

“Hallowe’en?” Jane was startled.  "The night before The Feast of All Saints?  You are celebrating that again?  When I was at home it had been outlawed because the veneration of saints is but popish superstition.”

Nellie bristled at the remark, but held her tongue.  Jane was reconciled to living in a house with a Roman Catholic, but her strict Anglicanism sometimes rubbed Nellie the wrong way, and Nellie had to learn to be patient with Jane.

“That’s not really an issue anymore, Jane, at least not around here.  No one thinks of it as particularly religious anymore.  Anyway, I was going to be a witch.”

Jane was seriously alarmed.  “But . . . but witchcraft is a felony!  Witches are hanged for performing black magic!”

Nellie took a deep breath.  “I’m not really going to be a witch, just dress up like one for fun.  Besides, there aren’t really any witches, and science has shown that magic isn’t real either.”   

Jane opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t think what to say.  Time and again she had been told that science had disproved many things she had thought were true.              

“Hallowe’en is just a time for children to dress up in costumes,” Nellie went on, “sometimes as scary things, like witches or ghosts or monsters.  And then they go Trick or Treating.  They go from house to house and people give them candy.”

“Oh!  They go a-guising?  And are rewarded with sweets?  I have seen guisers at Yuletide. When they came to deLacey Hall, the steward gave them cakes and ale”

“Well, Trick or Treating is loads of fun!  If someone doesn’t give you a treat, you get to play a trick on them!”

“As if when the Plough Stots are not given strong ale on Plough Monday, they plough up the farm yard?”

“Well . . . sort of like that, I guess.  Usually it involves eggs and soap.  But you’ll love Trick or Treating, especially once you get a bag full of candy!  Make a costume and come along with us, Jane!”

“Since it is neither popery nor witchcraft, I will, Nellie.  But I would not wish gentle folk to be afraid of me, so I will have but a visor and a cloak to my disguise.”

“Wonderful, Jane.  Come, help me make a jack o’lantern!”  Nellie started to carve the large pumpkin she had. 

After a while Jane exclaimed, “Oh!  ‘Tis a spunky!  I have seen them carved from big turnips, but this pompion is bigger and easy to carve!”  Jane smiled.  “Big, bright spunkies, children going a-guising for sweets, and playing tricks on people!  I shall like Hallowe’en very much!”