Boo! (Happy Halloween!)

Boo! (Happy Halloween!) – by Liam Sweeny.

Is it Halloween, all ye freaks and ghouls (although ye freaks are year-round.) It is time to go out and get candy for the lil’ ones, though Halloween on a Tuesday means most of the candy was got over the weekend. So I got no candy, but I do have some knowledge to drop in your bag.

If you were a poor kid, you spent many a Halloween dressed up in a sheet with two eye holes poked out as a friendly ghost. And if you were really poor, your mom would never let you poke holes in a perfectly good sheet, and you went as a bum instead. But I was able to be a ghost here and there. And I wandered the streets saying, “trick or treat,” and the crowd favorite, “Boo!”

So, boo. That crowd favorite. Or least favorite if you’re at a football game. Where did it come from? This is really tough, because it came from a few places. Most notably for our purposes, it came from Scotland, and it was a way to scare crying children. I have no idea why an historic Scot would want to scare crying children, but we’ll let history have its secrets. Needless to say, when the Scots Irish settled in America, they brought “Boo” with them. They also brought Jack-o-lanterns, which went from being carved in turnips to being carved into the more bodacious pumpkin.

“Boo actually goes back further. Much further, in fact, to ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, where the Latin word “boāre” and the Greek word “βοãv”, mean “to cry aloud, roar, shout.”

So we’ve learned something. Boo is damn near ancient, and really had nothing to do with ghosts, just scaring children. And Jack-o-lanterns used to be turnips.

And not to leave you feeling empty handed (or bagged,) did you know that the first witch that confessed to riding a broom was a man? Guillaume Edelin, arrested in 1465, tortured, and his admission today would definitely be thrown out of court, but there you have it. Happy Halloween and leave at least three pieces of candy in that dish you brought to the office. C’mon now.

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