The Black Month

The Black Month

Breton folktale about Eve of All Souls (Hallowe'en) and November as month of the dead

Author's Note: In parts of Brittany it is the belief that on the Eve of All Souls, the Dead are permitted to return to the world; but that, being shapeless and voiceless, they enter into the bodies of the beggars who are called by the people the ' Children of God,' and in their form go from house to house, leaving on each a blessing. In the canticle of St. Herve it is said that as a child he went out with such as these to 'Sing the song of the souls': and one or more versions of these songs yet linger. As All Souls is the day of the Dead, so November is the Black Month, the Month of the Dead: more especially upon the coasts where the fall of the year brings home the fishermen who have been away at Iceland or the Bank, and of whom, all the long Summer, there has been no news. Day after day through the early Autumn, the' goelettes' come in with every tide; but as the time passes, the waiting for those that delay grows more anxious and the home-coming less sure. And as every season there are many who do not come home, it is indeed true that' November makes more widows than all the rest of the year.

Prose by M. Clothilde Balfour

Headpiece by John Duncan

Patrick Geddes & Colleagues

Winter 1896-1897

Public Domain

Source: Ryerson University Library Archives and Special Collections

Yellow Nineties 2.0, edited by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities

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English

Image, text

Prose

EGV4_balfour_black
EGV4_decorp_p132
EGV4o_duncan_head_p132

27 Aug 2017, KF
13 Nov 2017, ljk

Creative Commons