Also called soulmass cake, souling, soul-caking, caking night, harcake, Pão-por-Deus
Small spiced cakes marked with a cross, given at Allhallowtide to soulers who went door to door singing and promising to pray for the givers' dead. The custom is often named as a forerunner of trick-or-treating.
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Take care: Check for allergies to egg, dairy, wheat and nuts before giving baked goods, and label them. If children go door to door, an adult should go with them and they should visit only houses they know.
In Antrobus and Comberbach in Cheshire, groups of soulers perform a death and resurrection play in pubs from 31 October into November. The cast includes the Black Prince, King George, a Quack Doctor and Dick the Wild Horse, played by a man carrying a horse's skull on a pole.
Uses: Horse's skull on a pole, Costumes
On the edges of Sheffield, children went out on caking night around 1 November chanting a caking rhyme and were given a few pence at each house. Before World War II, children in Dungworth went caking in masks and asked householders to guess who they were.
Uses: Masks
On 1 November, Portuguese children go door to door asking for bread for God's sake and receive bread, cakes, nuts and fruit in cloth bags. It is the closest living relative of English souling.
Uses: Bread, Cakes, Nuts
Soul cakes were given at Allhallowtide, the days of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls, to soulers, mostly children and the poor, who went from house to house singing and praying for the givers' dead, then believed to be waiting in purgatory. Souling was first reported in 1511, and Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, written around 1593, compares a whining speaker to a beggar at Hallowmas. The custom outlived the Reformation and was kept by Protestants and Catholics alike.
By the late 19th century souling survived mainly in the north and west Midlands of England. In Shropshire a heap of soul cakes was set out on All Hallows' Eve for visitors, and in Cheshire soulers sang, carried a hooded horse's head called the Old Hob, and performed plays. Christina Hole recorded in 1975 that children in Cheshire and Shropshire still went souling. The souling song was popularised in 1963 by Peter, Paul and Mary as A' Soalin'.
A hollowed vegetable, now usually a pumpkin, carved with a face and lit from within at Halloween. In Ireland and Britain the turnip or mangelwurzel lanterns were set in windows to keep harmful spirits away, and the Irish tale of Stingy Jack explains its name.
A meal prepared and eaten in total silence, often backwards, at midnight. In Appalachia and the Ozarks young women set it to see the spirit of their future husband walk in; modern Pagans keep it at Samhain as a quiet supper for the dead.
On Twelfth Night, villagers in the English cider country gather around the oldest apple tree, soak toast in cider for the robins, pour cider on the roots, sing to the tree and make a racket to drive off bad spirits so the orchard bears well.
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