From the village up to Cliff Rigg, the Hall Fields footpath wends its way through this dense copse, and at most times the trees loom rather ominously, as though a scene from some gothic tale. But today they are dressed in the splendour of autumn’s palette. Each leaf, it seems, is vying to display its own shade of russet, amber, or gold, though the higher branches are almost entirely bare, prematurely skeletal. Post and wire stock fencing run either side of the path, keeping wandering feet from roaming beyond the bounds of their Right of Way and off the Hall Fields.
And so we come to today, the 4th of November, Mischief Night. Growing up in an East Midlands city in the 1960s, I confess I’d never heard of “Trick or Treat.” That cultural peculiarity came in with E.T., clutching its plastic tat and lurid masks. But “knocky nine doors”—now that was a game we knew well enough, involving a bit of thread attached to a door knocker, and absolutely no sign of modern video doorbells. Whether this mischief took place on the night before Bonfire Night, on All Hallows’ Eve, or on some other auspicious evening in November, I can not now say. It’s all become a blur.
Once though, Mischief Night was the occasion for gentle mayhem before the main event of Bonfire Night, when we commemorate (rather theatrically) Guy Fawkes and his plot to blow Parliament sky-high. It was a night for children to tip a rubbish bin or take a gate off its hinges, for harmless mischief in the half-light.
As for where it all began, no one quite knows. Some suggest it has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain, that vigil marking the descent into winter. Others say it springs from the Gunpowder Plot itself, with November’s air charged with the memory of plots thwarted and dark doings exposed. When the man himself was up to his mischief. Oddly enough, the first written mention of Mischief Night occurs in the 18th century—and then it was a spring affair, tied to May Day, of all things.
Whatever its beginnings, Mischief Night is older than “Trick or Treat” by centuries and rather more atmospheric. It harks back to a time when customs were woven tightly through village life, strengthening the bonds between neighbours. The tradition has faded, as things will, but it lingers in memory as a hint of something rather more thrilling than a plastic skeleton hanging in a front garden.
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