Editing Samhain (section)

===Ritual bonfires===
Like Bealtaine, bonfires were lit on hilltops at Samhain, and there were rituals involving them.<ref name=monaghan407/> By the early modern era, they were most common in parts of the [[Scottish Highlands]], on the Isle of Man, in north and mid-Wales, and in parts of [[Ulster]].<ref name="hutton369">Hutton, p. 369</ref> [[F. Marian McNeill]] says that they were formerly [[need-fire]]s, but that this custom died out.<ref name="McNeill"/> Likewise, only certain kinds of wood were traditionally used, but later records show that many kinds of flammable material were burnt.<ref name="Campbell">[[John Gregorson Campbell|Campbell, John Gregorson]] (1900, 1902, 2005) ''The Gaelic Otherworld''. Edited by Ronald Black. Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd. {{ISBN|1-84158-207-7}} pp. 559–62</ref> It is suggested that the fires were a kind of [[sympathetic magic|imitative or sympathetic magic]]; mimicking the Sun, helping the "powers of growth" and holding back the decay and darkness of winter.<ref name="McNeill"/><ref name=macculloch/><ref name="frazer63">Frazer, James George (1922). ''[[The Golden Bough|The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion]]''. [http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/frazer/gb06301.htm Chapter 63, Part 1: On the Fire-festivals in general].</ref> They may also have served to symbolically "burn up and destroy all harmful influences".<ref name=frazer63/> Accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries suggest that the fires, smoke, and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers.<ref name="hutton365-368">Hutton, pp. 365–68</ref>

In 19th-century [[Moray]], boys asked for bonfire fuel from each house in the village. When the fire was lit, "one after another of the youths laid himself down on the ground as near to the fire as possible so as not to be burned and in such a position as to let the smoke roll over him. The others ran through the smoke and jumped over him". When the bonfire burnt, they scattered the ashes, vying for who should scatter them most.<ref name=hutton365-368/> In some areas, two bonfires would be built side by side, and the people—sometimes with their livestock—would walk between them as a cleansing ritual. The bones of slaughtered cattle were said to have been cast upon bonfires.<ref>{{cite book |last=Nicholls |first=Kenneth W. |title=A New History of Ireland, Volume II, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534 |chapter=Gaelic society and economy |editor-last=Cosgrove |editor-first=Art |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8vSht2aNHR4C&pg=PA397 |year=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-953970-3 |pages=397–438 |orig-year=1987 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539703.003.0015}}</ref>

People also took the flames from the bonfire back to their homes. During the 19th century, in parts of Scotland, torches of burning [[Scots pine|fir]] or turf were carried [[sunwise]] around homes and fields to protect them.<ref name=hutton369/> In some places, people doused their hearth fires on Samhain night. Each family then solemnly re-lit its hearth from the communal bonfire, thus bonding the community.<ref name="O"/><ref name="McNeill"/> The 17th-century writer Geoffrey Keating claimed that this was an ancient tradition instituted by the druids.<ref name="Stations361"/> Dousing the old fire and bringing in the new may have been a way of banishing evil, which was part of New Year festivals in many countries.<ref name=macculloch/>