Large Fierce Mammal

What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! By Frederick Simpson Coburn (1899). Ichabod Crane walks home after an evening listening to ghost stories. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichabod_Crane#/media/File:What_fearful_shapes_and_shadows_beset_his_path_-_The_Legend_of_Sleepy_Hollow_(1899),_frontispiece_-_BL.jpg)

In this month of months, ancient and time honoured Faith, lore, and legend hold that the veil keeping separate the realms of the living and the dead grows thinner by the hour, its threadbare remnants strained to their utmost by the stentorian gusts that waxing, blow between worlds to crescendo upon the night called All Hallows’ Eve.

Hallowe’en — a night to doubt the senses and deploy graven gourds against things of ill intent. Not to be abroad lest you find your end like Ichabod Crane who was never seen again.

The current era’s pantheon of Hallowe’en participants includes every legendary monster that has ever sold a book or theatre seat. In Truth, what kept our ancestors in of an All Hallows’ Eve had nought to do with vampires, werewolves, zombies, or mummies from far off lands. Faeries though, looking to abduct the unwary by force or subterfuge, and the spirits of departed ancestors, once beloved, finding their way back to places and folk of dim remembering — what fell cravings may have gotten into them in their time on the other side? These were another matter!

It will come as no surprise that these concerns held their greatest sway in the days when to answer the call of nature was synonymous with a sometimes perilous pilgrimage to the outhouse. Commonly a solitary affair, notwithstanding the social nature of the enterprise implied by popularity of the “two holer” which, as everyone knows, was invented to control growth of the stalagmite in winter.

So here is some age old practical advice on Hallowe’en risk management, brought down through LFM family lore from both the Old World and the New. Ignore it at your peril.

What Gapes Invites to Enter In

By LFM

As sunset comes to hill and dale,
Familiar paths grow grey and pale,
So tarry not ere darkness fall
To sprightly heeding Nature’s call!

‘Tis but a trice from dusk to dark,
The timing’s all, these words pray mark!
Whatever urge may trouble thee,
Thy privy’s not the place to be!

Who nightfall finds in such a spot
Would best be served by chamber pot.
The smell may linger in the room,
But better that than certain doom!

So fill the crock or hold it in,
Cleave to love of kith and kin!
One never knows what darkling soul
May clamber up the privy hole.

What gapes invites to enter in,
What dangles, bait for drooling chin,
Forget not! Things with darksome goals
May hide their musk in privy holes.

Dismiss these words as worthless din,
Be lost for good to kith and kin,
Thy epitaph their only ken —
“Went to shit, not seen again.”