Samhain Festival (31.10., obviously)

Since it is my declared goal to finish with the posts about October before the end of November (very ambitious xD), it's time now to write a post about the last day of October. I mean, yeah, we had just returned from Galway the night before, but, of course, we couldn't just have a day off after that. Having days off is not what Erasmus is about. :-P
So it was the 31st of October, commonly known as Halloween - or Hallowe'en. (That's how my Early Irish lecturer spells it, and it's actually a legitimate spelling variant of it, I looked it up. ^^) And nobody gave a shit about how to spell that, because we didn't celebrate that, but Samhain. Which could be spelled differently, like Samain or Samaine...? And please nobody ask me about how to pronounce it in English, I so don't have a clue. xD
Anyway, we celebrated the day a bit differently - the original traditional Irish way, I'd say, because Samhain is a Gaelic festival. Proven by Wikipedia. :-P
The Celtic Society of the university (yeah, Maynooth has a society for pretty much everything ^^) organized a trip to a Samhain festival at the Hill of Ward.

Since even most of us (and we live in Ireland at the moment) were like, "Where the hell are we going anyway?", I don't expect anyone to know where that is. Therefore, it's time to insert the obligatory map now:

But to be honest, most of us didn't really care where exactly we were going. It was more like a group event, and a birthday party for one of us. xD
It was only during the trip when I learned that the Celtic Society had actually sent emails with important information regarding the trip. Well, needless to mention it - I hadn't received any emails. And I was not the only one... But yeah, I mean, I had somehow expected that there wouldn't be toilets somewhere on a hill and that you should wear proper shoes. My opportunity to wear my shiny rain boots again... :-P
So we went to Athboy with a bus and had dinner at some restaurant. After that we where still too early for the meeting in the park. Only that nobody mentioned that we were supposed to meet all the other festival participants. So I was merely confused - "What are we early for, and why are we going to a pub now?" Okay, honestly, you don't need a reason to go to the pub when you're in Ireland, but I would say you need one when you're going there with a group of students who want to attend a Samhain festival...
Whatever, after half an hour we could finally go to the meeting, where we got the briefing for the festival plan, including the rehearsing of a song we should later sing. I managed to find the lyrics online, which was necessary, because I was just unable to remember these four lines. xD

Tlachtga Lady Goddess Fair
Come to us on frosted air
Guide our path by pale moonlight
Light our fires on Samhain night.

This is the song of Tlachtga, the mythological person whose story was told on her hill (seems like the Hill of Ward can also be called Hill of Tlachtga or so) in that night.
The atmosphere of this festival was really incredible, first the gathering in the park, then the light procession up the hill, and then the festivity on the hill with the telling of the story and the playing of music...
There is now way of capturing the feeling of the Festival of Fire in pictures (or videos - someone actually did one, but fortunately, that never appeared on Facebook...), but I was at least trying. Just try to ignore the quality, my camera was not made for night shots...

Yeah, Halloween was also present...

Our flag-bearers ;-)

I hope you can tell from the pictures that it was pretty magical and amazing in the night where the curtain between our world and the Otherworld is supposed to be at its thinnest. And no, that doesn't mean that the people who went to the bushes are possessed by ghosts now. I mean, some people took the risk of meeting Otherworldly creatures while peeing even twice: uphill and downhill. I just waited until we got back to the pub. There you're only at risk of meeting drunk people (not sure what's more annoying though ^^).