radiant Fair Folk
ride forth from gates in hillside
buried with the dead
yesterday’s forgotten gods
returning for just one night
By Aeronwy Dafies
The Leprechaun
By Mark Hudson
Deep in the heart of Dublin,
is some news that is troubling.
Every year at all hallows eve,
a leprechaun comes to deceive.
As kids go out to collect candy,
the leprechaun drinks his brandy.
He loves to create a little scaring,
his masquerade is overbearing.
A short little creepy freak,
green as the rivers that leak.
St. Patrick might’ve driven out the snakes,
but the leprechaun is there for souls to take.
He waits by the graveyard, singing a tune,
haunting like Celts, and ancient ruins.
As the kids walk by, on a dare,
the leprechaun is there to scare.
The kids have heard the legend before,
but they dismiss it as folklore.
But there is the leprechaun, bags of gold,
promising the kids they’ll never grow old.
He looks at them with his green eyes,
he almost seems to hypnotize.
But the kids make a great getaway,
and the leprechaun begins to fade away.
He’ll be haunting the graveyard next year,
this leprechaun damned to drink beer!
Samhain
By DS Davidson
Celtic New Year
Echoed in modern lore
Night of the living and the dead
Spirits from days of yore
Slip through from the other-side
Through half-open spirit door
Bobbing
By Cardinal Cox
Just one ripened apple less in the tub
Than there are blindfolded competitors
And in some of the fruit burrow a grub
Tonight’s the night the sidhe open their doors
There is one whose face is in the water
Who will never grab a prize with their mouth
Now no longer someone’s son or daughter
A dread barge waits on waves to take them south
They failed the contest of the Samhain bob
So now they go to the dark harvest isle
In the punt’s one with a terrible job
Out amongst the fen by many a mile
Autumn is going – winter is ahead
One less mouth that will never now be fed
An Old-Fashioned Hallowe’en
By DJ Tyrer
Half-forgotten:
Days of apple-bobbing
Spouse-revealing rituals
And, believing Jack-o’-lanterns
Were for more than cheap decoration.
Simple sheet ghosts
Papier-mâché masks:
No plastic or other tat;
Possibility that the dead
Were somewhere close by.
An old fashioned Hallowe’en…
Originally published in Siren’s Call
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