Lang may yer lum reek!
- May you have fuel in your hearth and smoke in your chimney.
I love traditions for any occasion and there’s a good few to choose from at Hogmanay. I do like to clean the house - it’s not a great big clean but enough to make me feel a bit organised, and hopefully that fortune will carry on throughout the year.
The Hogmanay Lads (gillean callaig)
I was brought up with more irish lore than Scottish - my dad telling stories of the Wren Boys (on St STehens Day and the Biddie Boys at Imbolc.
Yet the Hogmanay Lad tradition which varied regionally was held in the Hebrides, Shetland, Orkney and the Faroe Islands have a similar theme.
My first ever Mari Lwyd doll
There is the dressing up, offering anonymity in this rite at a time of year where your outside of the soial norms in the liminality of the season. There is a procession through the village, or your area of the ton. The music of the procession and parts of the rite drive away the evil spirits. Rites over the threshold might be rymes to be answered and an eventual inviting into the house (much like the Welsh Mari Lwyd).
Once inside there are games and perhaps a divination all which are a cathrtic release and a way for everyone to enjoy themselves. Ries to bringin good luck and presperity and blessings.
The tradition of the Hogmanay lads is thought that some of the traditions of the Hebrides came from the Vikings, who ruled and settled in the islands.
The Hogmanay Lads would visit the houses with songs, bull-hides and sticks, asking for donations of food and drinks from the household in exchange for a blessing and saining. The sticks would be used to beat around the house as they went around sunwise and called the inhabitants to come out - on the one hand the whole thing was to get the household's attention, but on the other, with the noise and the sunwise turn, and someone dressed in the hide of a bull.
This tradition might well be a protective rite, too, scaring away the evil spirits with the noise and a bigger, scarier beast (the bull) as anything that might be around, perhaps. (Tairis - A Hogmanay Blessing).
The bull - is a generally a hide preserved from the winter bull killed at Martinmas - which might also symbolise the winter itself, and all of the things that loomed in the season - cold and want, death and illness. The household, in giving the lads hospitality, effectively paid it off, in the hopes of avoiding any of the wintry dangers in future. (Tairis - A Hogmanay blessing).
A description of the rite of the Hogmanay Boys from the Carmina Gadelica:
Once inside, the bull-hide might be singed and the smoke wafted around the room, just like the juniper and water that would be used the next day, and every member of the household would lean in to inhale the fumes and stench. If the household gave the gillean callaig hospitality to their liking, the lads would leave with a blessing.
CALLUINEN HO! - This rune is still repeated in the Isles. Rarely, however, do two persons recite it alike. This renders it difficult to decide the right form of the words.
The walls of the old houses in the West are very thick - from five to eight feet. There are no gables, the walls being of uniform height throughout. The roof of the house being raised from the inner edge of the wall, a broad terrace is left on the outside. Two or three stones project from the wall at the door, forming steps. On these the inmates ascend for purposes of thatching and securing the roof in time of storm. The 'gillean Callaig' carollers or Hogmanay lads perambulate the townland at night. One man is enveloped in the hard hide of a bull with the horns and hoofs still attached. When the men come to a house they ascend the wall and run round sunwise, the man in the hide shaking the horns and hoofs, and the other men striking the hard hide with sticks. The appearance of the man in the hide is gruesome, while the din made is terrific. Having descended and recited their runes at the door, the Hogmanay men are admitted and treated to the best in the house.
The performance seems to be symbolic, but of what it is not easy to say, unless of laying an evil spirit. That the rite is heathen and ancient is evident.
Great good luck to the house,
Good luck to the family,
Good luck to every rafter of it,
And to every wordly thing in it.
Good luck to horses and cattle,
Good luck to the sheep.
Good luck to every thing,
And good luck to all your means.
Luck to the good-wife.
Good luck to the children,
Good luck to every friend.
Great fortune and health to all.
Alexander MacGregor
First hand account from DJ MacIntyre, a Gaelic officer at the University of the Highlands and Islands, on the tradition once popular on South Uist in the Western Isles:
As you walked between each house the boys would shout in Gaelic "Hogmanay and New Year Hooray". This alerted the folk, especially on a clear calm night, that the Hogmanay boys were on their way.
Outside each house one person would recite the Hogmanay poem and at the end of the poem ask the man of the house for permission to enter.
Once inside the house a candle would be lit by the eldest boy in the group and then the candle would be passed round all family members starting with the householder.
There was superstition involved with this as it was thought that when the candle was being circled above each individual's head, if the candle was to go out it meant that individual would have a year of bad luck.
BBC article - Remembering lost tradition of Hogmanay Boys
Dr Ragnhild Ljosland, a lecturer at Centre for Nordic Studies in Orkney, confirms the Hogmanay Boys tradition has connections to Norse culture.
If we go a couple of hundred years further back in time, Norwegian people used to walk in a group around the farms in the parish, dressed up so that nobody would recognise them.
These costumes could be rather frightening and represent fantastical animals, such as an effigy of a billygoat's head on a stick. The guisers would be offered food and drink at each farm.
Do you have any Hogmany traditions, or your own rituals for the new year? One of mine is an augury of observing the the clouds, it’s a variance of the tradition of Neldoracht (cloud divination). For me it’s the pattern of light, the shapes of clouds and the colours. WHat inspiration I take from that. What areas are the clouds lighting up and the feelings and inspiration thats taken from that.
A blessings might simply be walking around the house with a candle and reciting a favourite charm or prayer.
You could use the one by Alexander MacGregor above.
Wishing you an inspired Hogmanay and for countless wondrous things to unfold in the most unexpected ways
It wouldn’t be a Hogmanay post without Auld Lang Syne - and here is the wondrous Julie Folwis
Links:
Tairis - A Hogmanay Blessing
Check out the amazing website Tairis, on Scottish Gaelic Polytheism. Her research is amazing and I so appreciate her sharing her insights.
Thank you for all you’ve done in 2024! A blessed New Year to you!
As a child I remember our family sitting down to a steak pie dinner at 10pm. Then my dad would go out with the dog before the bells. And my mum and I would put out the short bread and madera cake on a special plate specifically for the new year. My dad would come in straight after the bells.
The ship yard would sound their horns at the stroke of midnight. I remember all the neighbours out their windows shouting happy new year to each other.
Our close was like a mini community in Glasgow. The lad who lived on the top floor would chap on all the doors to first foot the neighbours. He had to have dark hair to fo this.