Halloween Before Trick-or-Treating: Scottish Traditions, Guising & Soul Cakes

Halloween has a way of making the past feel very close.

We recognize the pumpkins, costumes, children at the door and something sweet waiting on the other side. But start pulling gently at those familiar threads and the holiday begins leading somewhere older — into kale yards, firelit rooms, Scottish islands, old poems, handmade disguises and customs that once asked some very serious questions of a very mysterious night.

That is where this episode of The Kitchen Radio Hour began: with a shovel, a research desk, and what seemed like a perfectly innocent question about Halloween.

What did Halloween look like before it looked like Halloween?

The answer took us from Robert Burns’s eighteenth-century Scotland to the guisers of South Uist, and eventually south again to an English door where someone might once have come asking for a soul cake.

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Halloween, Part I — an evening of fair folk, fortune-telling, guisers, souling and the curious history waiting behind the modern holiday.

Into the Old Halloween

When the Fair Folk Weren’t Quite So Friendly

Say the word fairy today and it is easy to imagine something tiny, winged and rather lovely.

The beings encountered in older Scottish folklore could be considerably more complicated.

This is also where a little historical caution matters. Folklore records beliefs, stories and traditions; it does not tell us that every person in every Scottish community believed precisely the same thing in precisely the same way. What it allows us to do is listen to what people recorded and to the world those records describe.

Historically inspired illustration of Scottish fairy folklore — Historically Inspired Illustration The Fair Folk could appear beautiful and otherworldly — but beauty in folklore did not necessarily mean harmless.

Historically inspired illustration of darker Scottish fairy folklore — Historically Inspired Illustration Other tales imagined the unseen world as something stranger, darker, and considerably less welcoming.

These are not necessarily the sort of fairies one invites in and offers a biscuit.

A Poet & His Notes

Robert Burns Takes Us to Halloween

Robert Burns published his poem Halloween in the eighteenth century, but the poem gives us something more than verse.

Burns knew that readers beyond the part of Scotland he was describing might not understand every custom appearing in the poem, so he supplied explanatory notes.

In other words, Robert Burns brought his own research desk.

Robert Burns Halloween poem and eighteenth-century inspired imagery — Robert Burns — Halloween An imagined eighteenth-century setting inspired by Burns’s 1785 poem Halloween and the old Scottish customs he recorded.

Fortunes in the Dark

Fortune-Telling in the Kale Yard

Among the customs Burns records are games of divination — playful rituals that attempted to reveal something about marriage, prosperity, temperament or the future.

One involved going into the kale yard with eyes shut and choosing a plant without looking. Another put a pair of nuts into the fire and watched what happened between them.

Historically inspired scene of blindfolded Halloween kale divination — Historically Inspired Illustration Kale-yard divination — Choosing a kale stalk blindly — looking to the garden for clues about a future spouse.

Historically inspired Halloween nut-burning divination beside a fire — Historically Inspired Illustration Nut-burning divination — Two nuts cast into the fire — their behavior watched for clues about the future of a courtship.

The customs seem strange to us, but the questions really aren’t. Who will I marry? Will there be money? Will I be loved? What will happen to me?

Lanterns in the Dark

The Tumshies: Turnip Lanterns in the Dark

Not every old Halloween custom was a divination. Some belonged to the wider celebration — including the formidable business of hollowing out a turnip and carving a face into it.

Long before the pumpkin became Halloween’s familiar glowing face in North America, carved turnip lanterns belonged to older traditions across parts of Britain and Ireland.

Historical or historically inspired carved turnip Halloween lantern — MODERN PHOTOGRAPH — TRADITIONAL CUSTOM Two carved turnip lanterns, or “tumshies,” fitted with string handles for carrying.

Traditional carved turnip lantern for Halloween — MODERN PHOTOGRAPH— ILLUMINATED TURNIP LANTERN A hollowed turnip lantern illuminated from within.

Something Looks Familiar

Guising

Then Halloween begins to resemble something we know.

People disguised themselves and went from house to house. But there was an important difference: the guiser was expected to do a turn — perhaps a song, rhyme, joke or other performance — before receiving something in return.

Simply appearing at the door with an open pillowcase would not quite do.

Historical photograph of Scottish Halloween guisers — HISTORICALLY INSPIRED ILLUSTRATION South Uist — 1932 Children taking part in the Halloween guising tradition on South Uist, wearing homemade disguises.

Historical photograph of guisers in Scotland — HISTORICALLY INSPIRED ILLUSTRATION South Uist — 1932 Halloween guisers crossing the South Uist landscape in homemade disguises beneath an autumn moon.

Halloween guisers documented on South Uist — HISTORICALLY INSPIRED ILLUSTRATION South Uist — 1932 Young guisers on South Uist, dressed in homemade costumes for Halloween.

In South Uist in 1932, American-born folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw documented Halloween celebrations and the people taking part in them.

Suddenly the tradition is no longer merely something described on an old page. There are people standing in front of the camera in handmade disguises, participating in a Halloween within living historical memory.

Another Knock at the Door

Souling

Travel south again and another door opens.

The surviving evidence changes across the centuries, which means we should resist turning hundreds of years of custom into one tidy, unchanging tradition.

But the practice we now call souling is associated with All Saints’ and particularly All Souls’ observances. Historical references connect bread and later cakes with prayer, remembrance of the dead and giving to the poor.

Historically inspired illustration of the souling tradition — Historically Inspired Illustration Souling brought visitors from door to door during the observances surrounding All Saints’ and All Souls’.

Historically inspired illustration of people receiving soul cakes — Historically Inspired Illustration At the door, food — and in later accounts, soul cakes — could be given in connection with remembrance and prayer for the dead.

A note from the Research Desk: The evidence for souling does not describe one identical practice continuing unchanged from the Middle Ages onward. The records change over time and place, and this article preserves those distinctions rather than collapsing them into a single origin story.

All Souls’ Day

Thomas Blount & the Soul Cakes

By the seventeenth century, the evidence becomes more specific. Thomas Blount wrote in 1674 of oat cakes given by wealthier people to the poor on All Souls’ Day.

And Then There Were…

Soul Cakes

And this is where the Research Desk ran into a problem.

We know cakes — and earlier, bread — were distributed in connection with prayer and remembrance. Later records give us additional clues, and versions differed according to place and period.

What the historical record does not hand us is one neat, definitive medieval recipe card saying:

“Here, Bianca. This is exactly how you make a soul cake.”

Which immediately raised rather more questions.

Were they sweet? Were they more like bread? Were they crisp? Were they soft? How thick were they? What spices did they use?

Research can give us clues. It cannot give us every answer.

Coming in Part II

Into the Kitchen: Making a Soul Cake

So I am taking what the historical record can tell us — and being very clear about what it cannot — and heading into my kitchen.

Not to claim an ancient recipe miraculously recovered from the past, but to see whether those surviving clues can become a historically inspired soul cake.

From the Research Desk

Sources & Further Reading

This episode draws upon historical texts, archival material and modern institutional collections.

Robert Burns, Halloween — Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
John Mirk — English Heritage, “Soul Cakes”
Thomas Blount, 1674 — English Heritage, “Soul Cakes”
Margaret Fay Shaw / South Uist material — National Trust for Scotland, “A Hebridean Halloween”
National Trust for Scotland — “Oidhche Shamhna: a South Uist Halloween”

Historical interpretations in this companion article are presented with attention to changes in custom across time and place. Historically inspired illustrations are identified separately from archival photographs and period sources.