My Sunday Twosome

This week's given words at Sunday's Whirligig are calamity, rice, difficult, calmness, glass, mutter, hours, plums, salted, minutes, wrinkled and  jar. I have used most of them.

Hallowmass Eve

It was late October in the year of our Lord 1789. In the waning hours of Hallowmass Eve, urchins  in rags, and sufferers from calamity marched through the cobbled streets of Bartonwick. Smoke curled into the sky from the crooked chimneys of the thatched stone cottages. Banging on doors, the soulers begged for food and money, offering songs and prayers in payment.

A soul cake, a soul cake,  
Please, good missus, a soul cake.
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry, 

Any good thing to make us all merry.

                                                         One for Peter, two for Paul,                                                             And three for Him that made us all.

Old Harriet Wicklesmith opened her creaking oak door, and a smile spread across her wrinkled face. All day she had mixed, stirred and baked her Soul Cakes. She proffered a glass jar, filled with steaming cross-topped sweetmeats. One by one, the soulers helped themselves. 

‘May your souls be freed from Purgatory when these cakes are eaten’ she muttered.

‘We shall eat the fruit of your labour. Blessings and prosperity will be yours’ they replied.

She returned to the calmness of her room and settled before the crackling log fire, content in the knowledge that her good deed was done and her soul comforted for another year.

At Sunday Scribblings 2 our weekly word is indignant.

Epiphany

Grumpy old Edward Scrivens had become increasingly indignant with the kids that made a beeline for his house every Halloween and bombarded it with messy missiles.

It was time to retaliate. Armed with boxes of eggs and flour bombs he sat at an upstairs window in readiness for the advancing army of ghosts and ghouls.

A giggling bunch of demons and devils came into view and he launched a handful of projectiles. They struck a little tiny witch.

She looked down at the slime and sludge running down her costume and burst into tears. One of the larger fiends picked the distraught child up, and cradled her in his arms.

Edward was suddenly overcome with guilt. He rushed downstairs and out into the street. But they had gone.

That was several years ago. Tonight every costume-clad child in the area will make its annual pilgrimage to Edward’s house. His garden will glow with pumpkins, his tree will be laden with cobwebs and dangling spiders. As they walk down his path, he will leap from behind a bush and shower them with sweets. Then they will head for a table groaning with tempting treats and blood red pop.

I might just pop round too!

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