Are you scared?

On this All Hallows Eve it's a pertinent question. My Mother was Welsh and my Father partly Irish (The other parts were English and a splash of Scots). Mother was a great storyteller and my sibling and I would try to get her to tell stories before bedtime. This worked best sitting around the fire during wintertime. In the right mood, which depended largely on the ingenuity of our questions, she would talk and talk sometimes until late. As the clock struck ten, later if we were lucky, she would declare herself amazed by the lateness of the hour and order us to bed.

The stories were of long dead ancestors, her childhood and a retelling of stories she'd heard as a child. Her father, my Taid, was a soldier. During the Boxer rising he'd served in the British contingent of the International brigade that marched to the relief of Peking. We loved the description of Pekinese dogs, mandarin's moustache combs and ivory clad books (I saw the last two). There were many of his stories from India too. Celtic storytelling is never complete without ghost stories. The black dog that appeared before tragedy, lost souls searching for possessions or loved ones. Things that go bump in the night. The ones that inspired the Scottish prayer:

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

As a child I had occasional nightmares. Most of them I can still remember. One, when I was about five, happened around this time of year. In my dream we (a group of children) were walking through fields dressed in tunics. Someone shouted “Run they want us for the fire.” Whoever it was pointed at bonfires burning brightly in the distance. Around them, people danced and shouted. Someone screamed. I started running away from a group of knife brandishing women in white robes. Two of them caught me. I was terrified to see my Mother and favourite old lady neighbour Auntie Annie Clark. I woke in panic and rushed to my Mother for comfort.

Years later I discussed this with my Mother. ‘I think,' she told me, ‘that you saw a previous life and the Samhain rites. Samhain is the Celtic festival that marks the end of harvest and start of winter. It lasted from sunset October 31 to sunset November 1. It predates All hallows and is probably that festival's origin. Wisdom has it that the problem with history is that it's written by the victors. The Romans hated the Druids citing human sacrifice as a reason. This, they earnestly discussed while watching gladiators kill each other. Until someone invents a time machine we will never know the truth.

I am intrigued that, despite two millennia of Christianity the belief in reincarnation is still strong. My Mother was a devout Christian. She firmly believed that she had lived before and would do so again. No amount of discussion could shake her faith in either, incompatible belief. If my nightmare was the memory of a past life, I wonder what happened to me? How did my two horrid tormentors turn up in this life as my Mother and elderly playmate? I guess I'll have to wait for my next life to find out.