IF you’ve seen all the skeletons and ghoulish costumes on sale in the shops - and, let’s face it, they’ve been fairly hard to miss - you’ll know that today is Hallowe’en. But October 31 hasn’t always been just for the kids. As the Glasgow Herald noted in 1938, the Glasgow Saint Andrew Society had celebrated the event every year since its inception in 1912.
The 1938 party, staged at the city’s Saltire House, was a cheerful affair. The official programme was written entirely in broad Scots, too: “Wi’ sang’ an’ clatter an’ a cotholok o’ ploys, pliskies an’ a geggie’ an a’,” it said of the festivities to come, and added that the guisers “merched roon’ the lecture ha’ and showed aff their cantrips and camperlecks”, sadly unaware that future generations would have to consult Google to find out what at least some of the words meant. The programme was written by John A Bone, brother of Sir Muirhead Bone, the noted artist.
The women’s fancy-dress contest was won by a Red Indian squaw, complete with papoose. Second prize went to Walt Disney’s Dopey (or a replica thereof). After the contest, “the whole clamjamfry scaled doonstairs, where there were champit tatties, dooking for apples, and the bowls of destiny”, and a a play and a concert. One attraction offered what the paper described as “illuminating peeps into the future ... accomplished in a dim light over kail stems and with the assistance of a small boy hidden away in a cupboard.”
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