Hop tu Naa, or Turnips v Pumpkins!
31 Oct 2005 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatHappy New Year! Well it would have been, many years ago. Tonight is Hop tu Naa, celebrated here on the Isle of Man for many hundreds of years, and now intertwined with Hallowe’en, but predating it by a very long time.
In the old Gaelic tradition the New Year began with the beginning of winter, and there were New Year’s Eve celebrations even then, over a thousand years ago. Hop tu Naa is derived from the Gaelic phrase for ‘this is the night’ – because it was THE big night of the year.
Eventually the Celtic world was subsumed into the Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon dominated Europe, and New Year moved to mid-winter instead. Now in many places the celebrations moved with the date such as Scotland – where they celebrate Hogmanay which is a very similar corruption of the same phrase (Hop tu Naa is pronounced Hop Chew Nay.).
On the Isle of Man however the celebrations continued to be at the old time of year, Sauin in Manx and Samhain in Irish. This New Year’s Day was adopted by the Christians as All Hallows, just as they adopted many of the old festivals and put Christian ones at the same time, to help people adapt to the new religion.
The New Year traditions, and the British Hallowe’en traditions got mixed together over time – and the Celtic world believed that this turning of the year was a time when physical and spirit worlds were closer together then usual, so the witches fitted in to Hop tu Naa with ease. In fact the same thing happened in Scotland – it was just the name of the festival that moved with the date – their celebrations for October 31st used to be, and probably still are, very like ours.
Documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth century show that the young men and young women had different traditions at that time, but by the time I was a child they had become less sex-specific.
We children followed the tradition originally associated with the young men and made lanterns from turnips (a.k.a. swede or rutabaga), with scary faces to frighten away the bad spirits or the witches, lit with half a candle. Hollowing out the turnip was VERY hard work – I must have bent any number of serving spoons over the years, and we always got blisters from doing it. If you were very clever you made the face by cutting through the skin, but left a very thin layer of flesh, so that the candle shone through, but the wind couldn’t blow it out.
Then with my friends and little sister I went from house to house singing traditional Hop tu Naa songs, and being given small amounts of money at each. By my childhood these songs were usually about witches, but earlier records didn’t mention the witches. We sang about ‘Jinny the Witch’ – who was actually Joney the witch – well documented in Manx history, and ‘Old women’ – so I remember
Jinny the witch flew over the ditch
To fetch a stick to leather the mouse
That ran through her house
On Hop tu Naa
Hop tu Naa
Your mother’s flown away
And she won’t be back until the morning.
(Jinny flying on a broomstick, or more likely in a saag – Manx witches flew in big cooking pots called saags, and the implication that if your mother is away tonight then she must be a witch.)
Or –
I met an old woman she was baking bonnags
I asked her for one and she gave me two,
She was the finest old woman that ever I knew
Hop tu Naa, Hop tu Naa.
Not sure what was supernatural about baking bonnags – soda bread, but it might have been a reference to dumb cakes, which my predecessors, young Manx ladies, did whilst the men were out. The girls got together, and baked a fruit bonnag or similar in complete silence (not easy when you are with your friends for the evening!). Then , still silently, they each took a piece, ate half, and took the rest home, where they got ready for their bed, and slept with the piece of dumb-cake under their pillow, when they were meant to dream about their future husband.
We didn’t do anything as boring as silent baking though! We would bob for apples, tied by a string from the ceiling clothes airer, which we had to eat without hands. Then we used some of our stock of coins from the singing to buy marshmallows at Mrs. Balls shop at the end of the road, which we toasted on metal skewers over the gas flame of the cooker, usually until they were singed around the edges, and occasionally until they went up in flames!
These days Manx children have incorporated the American traditions into their own. I wonder sometimes if they are our own traditions taken by Manx and Scottish emigrants to North America in the first place. So we have children dressed as ghouls and ghosts, and more than half will have pumpkins not turnips. Daughter-dear had pumpkins for the last few years she went ‘trickle treating’ (her own version of Trick or Treat-ing which I loved dearly as a phrase!). I am all in favour of pumpkins – so much easier to hollow out than a turnip!
But the children still have to sing at my house, and most others that I know of – before they get their sweeties or money – a simple demand of Trick or Treat is not acceptable! So we have now an evening where Manx children dress up, like their American counterparts, tell spooky stories about witches, like some other European countries, and sing songs to traditional tunes which date back to the old Celtic New Year!
If you are interested in Manx Witches, you might like to go back to my post of January 19th - http://www.livejournal.com/users/curiouswombat/6766.html
Where I explained why the Isle-of-Man was a much safer place to be a witch than most of the rest of the world!
In the old Gaelic tradition the New Year began with the beginning of winter, and there were New Year’s Eve celebrations even then, over a thousand years ago. Hop tu Naa is derived from the Gaelic phrase for ‘this is the night’ – because it was THE big night of the year.
Eventually the Celtic world was subsumed into the Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon dominated Europe, and New Year moved to mid-winter instead. Now in many places the celebrations moved with the date such as Scotland – where they celebrate Hogmanay which is a very similar corruption of the same phrase (Hop tu Naa is pronounced Hop Chew Nay.).
On the Isle of Man however the celebrations continued to be at the old time of year, Sauin in Manx and Samhain in Irish. This New Year’s Day was adopted by the Christians as All Hallows, just as they adopted many of the old festivals and put Christian ones at the same time, to help people adapt to the new religion.
The New Year traditions, and the British Hallowe’en traditions got mixed together over time – and the Celtic world believed that this turning of the year was a time when physical and spirit worlds were closer together then usual, so the witches fitted in to Hop tu Naa with ease. In fact the same thing happened in Scotland – it was just the name of the festival that moved with the date – their celebrations for October 31st used to be, and probably still are, very like ours.
Documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth century show that the young men and young women had different traditions at that time, but by the time I was a child they had become less sex-specific.
We children followed the tradition originally associated with the young men and made lanterns from turnips (a.k.a. swede or rutabaga), with scary faces to frighten away the bad spirits or the witches, lit with half a candle. Hollowing out the turnip was VERY hard work – I must have bent any number of serving spoons over the years, and we always got blisters from doing it. If you were very clever you made the face by cutting through the skin, but left a very thin layer of flesh, so that the candle shone through, but the wind couldn’t blow it out.
Then with my friends and little sister I went from house to house singing traditional Hop tu Naa songs, and being given small amounts of money at each. By my childhood these songs were usually about witches, but earlier records didn’t mention the witches. We sang about ‘Jinny the Witch’ – who was actually Joney the witch – well documented in Manx history, and ‘Old women’ – so I remember
Jinny the witch flew over the ditch
To fetch a stick to leather the mouse
That ran through her house
On Hop tu Naa
Hop tu Naa
Your mother’s flown away
And she won’t be back until the morning.
(Jinny flying on a broomstick, or more likely in a saag – Manx witches flew in big cooking pots called saags, and the implication that if your mother is away tonight then she must be a witch.)
Or –
I met an old woman she was baking bonnags
I asked her for one and she gave me two,
She was the finest old woman that ever I knew
Hop tu Naa, Hop tu Naa.
Not sure what was supernatural about baking bonnags – soda bread, but it might have been a reference to dumb cakes, which my predecessors, young Manx ladies, did whilst the men were out. The girls got together, and baked a fruit bonnag or similar in complete silence (not easy when you are with your friends for the evening!). Then , still silently, they each took a piece, ate half, and took the rest home, where they got ready for their bed, and slept with the piece of dumb-cake under their pillow, when they were meant to dream about their future husband.
We didn’t do anything as boring as silent baking though! We would bob for apples, tied by a string from the ceiling clothes airer, which we had to eat without hands. Then we used some of our stock of coins from the singing to buy marshmallows at Mrs. Balls shop at the end of the road, which we toasted on metal skewers over the gas flame of the cooker, usually until they were singed around the edges, and occasionally until they went up in flames!
These days Manx children have incorporated the American traditions into their own. I wonder sometimes if they are our own traditions taken by Manx and Scottish emigrants to North America in the first place. So we have children dressed as ghouls and ghosts, and more than half will have pumpkins not turnips. Daughter-dear had pumpkins for the last few years she went ‘trickle treating’ (her own version of Trick or Treat-ing which I loved dearly as a phrase!). I am all in favour of pumpkins – so much easier to hollow out than a turnip!
But the children still have to sing at my house, and most others that I know of – before they get their sweeties or money – a simple demand of Trick or Treat is not acceptable! So we have now an evening where Manx children dress up, like their American counterparts, tell spooky stories about witches, like some other European countries, and sing songs to traditional tunes which date back to the old Celtic New Year!
If you are interested in Manx Witches, you might like to go back to my post of January 19th - http://www.livejournal.com/users/curiouswombat/6766.html
Where I explained why the Isle-of-Man was a much safer place to be a witch than most of the rest of the world!
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no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 07:57 pm (UTC)Really and truly, Halloween was just a precursor to Bonfire Night and the big party with fireworks. We got in our door to door begging by going round collecting "a penny for the guy" - which doesn't seem to happen much now. (And speaking of bonfire night, reading about all the ancient fire festivals that have got rolled up into the Guy Fawkes celebrations is another fascinating topic.)
Thanks for the post - you told me a bunch of things I didn't know!
no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 09:56 pm (UTC)Happy Halloween! Happy New Year! Enjoy Hop tu Naa!
no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 11:01 pm (UTC)And congrats on your win! I saw your husband's post on it.
no subject
Date: 31/10/2005 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 01/11/2005 05:34 am (UTC)Hee, I love the way that traditions can double-back to their countries of origin, bringing souvenir changes and additions with them!
Happy Holidays, Wombat! And congratulations on your win at Round 5 of the Lie To Me Awards!
no subject
Date: 01/11/2005 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 05/11/2005 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 05/11/2005 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 07/11/2005 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 31/10/2006 11:06 pm (UTC)