Scots the hail year roond

I’m pretty proud of my Scottish roots and in particular the fact that I’m a Glasgow lass.  The fact that I now live in the Scottish Highands means that I live with a different kind of Scottishness in particular the Invernesian traits.  As they say however you can take the girl out of Glasgow but you can’t take Glasgow out of the girl.  I still live my life very influenced by my Glasgow roots and hang on to my Glasgow accent with pride.

My Scottishness, I’ve noticed, seems to come to the fore at certain times of the year, particularly today, Halloween.  Now I’m not knocking any of the American traditions but I’ve noticed over the years that the Scottishness of Halloween is all but disappearing.  In my day we didn’t do ‘Trick or Treat’ mainly because most of our neighbours would have kicked our preverbal backsides if we’d tried any of the trick stuff on them.  In Scotland we went guisin (which is Scottish for dressing up).  There was never a shop bought costume in sight – most people (including the boys) raided their grannies wardrobes and went guisin as old women – quite a site.

Ready for their Halloween you would never guess that these guisers were only 9 years old!

Of course the important aspect of guisin was that it wasn’t enough just to dress up, you had to earn your treat by performing a song, reciting a poem or telling a joke.  This, I recall, was taken very seriously because if you were rubbish then ultimately so was your treat (yes I know we’re a tough race!).

I have fond memories of going guisin with my friends all looking like versions of our grandmothers carrying huge shopping bags we hoped to be fill as we wandered round from house to house.  Of course in those days the kids were free to wander without a responsible adult in sight – changed days eh!

It wasn’t just the kids who took it seriously.  It wasn’t uncommon to be invited into a house to ‘dook for apples’ (which translates as ducking for apples) – this meant leaning over a bowl of water and with your hands behind your back trying to pick one of the apples up with your teeth.  You would then move on to the ‘treacle scone’ (which was my favourite).  A scone would be smeared with copious amounts of black treacle and hung from the ceiling – with your hands behind your back you had to try to get a bite of the swinging treacle scone. It was not uncommon to find yourself soaking wet and with treacle all over your face and hair.  Of course the adult me has the utmost admiration for these households who didn’t seem to mind the water and treacle we left adorning the carpet when we left.

Folks would fill our bags with sweets, fruit and of course the proverbial monkey nuts (which none of us seemed to have terrible allergies to) but the best was money. People would put money in our bags and so at the end of our exploits we would have plenty of sweets to eat and money to buy even more to rot our teeth!

As for pumpkins I don’t think I actually saw one until I was an adult.  Our lanterns were carved out of keeps (turnips) – very Scottish!

So I guess my plea is to keep things ‘Scots the hail year roond’ and by keeping things Scots the whole year round we can hang on to our traditions.

So in our house there will be ‘Trick or Treat’ but the ‘trick’ will be that guisers will experience a Scottish Halloween with all the treats that has to offer.

Happy Guisin folks!

Me and my son Spencer getting ready for a Scottish Halloween

What traditions do you try to hold on to?