By late October, blackberries are truly spent. Those not taken by humans, insects and birds have shrivelled or have grown mouldy on the canes. Any that survive to the turn of winter are diminished, rotting and shrunken and they are far from the glossy lusciousness of the new berries when they first made their appearance in July and early August.
Now in a state of decay, their slow dying is emblematic of the end of the fertile year and the lull in agricultural activity. Their lives have spanned a couple of seasons from their appearance in late summer and autumn, to their slow death over the last number of weeks which extends their presence to the start of winter.
In the festive calendar, their lifespan is incorporated into the rituals of death and new beginnings as a symbol of the circle of life and death. In this dying phase, Halloween folk belief severs their connection with the human world through the agency of characters from the margins and other cosmic regions.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Three O'Clock Show, oral historian Dr Tomás Mac Conmara on the ancient roots of Halloween and Samhain
Folk belief holds that the blackberries are rendered inedible on Halloween by the actions of the púca, the fairies or the devil. Their actions in damaging the berries vary with descriptions ranging from the civil to the inferred to the euphemistic. They are said to 'touch, destroy, dirty, spoil, poison, soil' the berries. The ‘pooka crawls on them’ reports an account from Co Offaly in the National Folklore Schools’ Collection. We learn that ‘the devil spits on them’ in Co Roscommon, ‘the fairies dance on them’ in Co Cork and the fairies ‘put the blight on them’ in Co Carlow.
These activities also extended to sloes and haws and the contamination made the remaining fruit inedible. Essentially, the descriptions were designed to evoke fear and disgust making the eating of berries after Halloween a taboo.
But in line with many aspects of folk belief, the stories held practical and didactic instruction, illustrated in lively accounts of supernatural agency that left you in no doubt that berries were not good to eat after late October. The Carlow reference to putting the blight on them and another from Co Donegal, where ‘the fairies put a vale [veil] over the blackberries on Halloween night to protect them for themselves’, suggests that supernatural interference left some visible mark with something ‘put on them’ to hide them or to break their connection from this world.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, Regina Sexton on the history of traditional Halloween foods
The Donegal reference sees this action as marking the berries apart as fairy food. The veil in this instance may serve two functions in connecting the berries with the fairy realm, but it may also figuratively describe the fungal disease that attacks over ripe berries particularly in wet, humid and cool conditions. Botrytis Fruit Rot (Botrytis cinerea), also known as grey mould, causes the fruit to go soft, mouldy and unpleasant to eat. Given Ireland’s climatic conditions, this mass of fuzzy mould may have been seen as a fairy veil.
Consumption of mouldy berries will not cause serious medical issues, but it can result in digestive upset and associated unpleasant symptoms. In this context, the instructive message of the stories was usually directed at children.
However, the spread of mould was not fixed at any calendar point and nor was the folk belief in the quality of the berries fixed to Halloween and the stories were shared between Michaelmas (29 September) or the last Sunday in September and Halloween. In the following account from Co Kerry, the end of the blackberry season is recognised as the end of September. Here, it is also linked to the supernatural activities of the púca as a means of communicating intentional and effective messaging:
‘Blackberries are said to be definitely out of season after Michaelmas Night. On that night a certain ill-mannered pookee is said to go about making use of the fruit instead of the lavatory. On that account he is called in Irish "Pookee Na Smeeiróiga [sic]". I had a firm belief in him when I was young and I never dared to eat a blackberry after that night’.
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These folk accounts are not unique to Ireland. The belief was also widespread in Britain where the end of the blackberry season was tied to Michaelmas and entangled with Christian-based stories concerning the devil and Michael the Archangel. The storyline and structure of the British tales resonate strongly with the Irish examples with the elements of consumption end-dates; berry defilement and otherworld interferences around Michaelmas.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore summarises the beliefs as follows: "It is said that from then on the berries taste bad because the Devil has damaged them. Polite versions say he has struck them, kicked them, waved a club over them, or trampled them; less polite ones, that he has spat or pissed on them, which is likely to be the original idea, since blackberries become watery and sour once frost has got at them. The link with Michaelmas is because this feast celebrates the battle in Heaven when Michael the Archangel drove Satan out and hurled him down to earth (Revelations 12); perhaps the joke implies that he landed in a bramble bush, but this is not made explicit".
These shared narratives and the intentionality are an interesting insight into how seasonality was perceived, and relative understandings were transmitted. Ultimately, the message here is that out-of-season food is insipid, unpleasant and somewhat outside the natural order.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
