Secondary school
A secondary school is both an organization that provides secondary education and the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools can provide both lower secondary education and upper secondary education, but these can be provided in separate schools, as in the American middle and high school system. Secondary schools follow on from primary schools and lead into vocational and tertiary education. Attendance is compulsory in most countries for students between the ages of 11 and 16; the organisations and terminology are more or less unique in each country. Within the English speaking world, there are three used systems to describe the age of the child; the first is the'equivalent ages' countries that base their education systems on the'English model' use one of two methods to identify the year group, while countries that base their systems on the'American K-12 model' refer to their year groups as'grades'. This terminology extends into research literature. Below is a convenient comparison.
The building needs to accommodate: Curriculum content Teaching methods Costs Education within the political framework Use of school building Constraints imposed by the site Design philosophyEach country will have a different education system and priorities. Schools need to accommodate students, storage and electrical systems, support staff, ancillary staff and administration; the number of rooms required can be determined from the predicted roll of the school and the area needed. According to standards used in the United Kingdom, a general classroom for 30 students needs to be 55 m², or more generously 62 m². A general art room for 30 students needs to be 83 m ². A drama studio or a specialist science laboratory for 30 needs to be 90 m². Examples are given on, and 1,850 place secondary school. The building providing the education has to fulfil the needs of: The students, the teachers, the non-teaching support staff, the administrators and the community, it has to meet general government building guidelines, health requirements, minimal functional requirements for classrooms and showers, electricity and services and storage of textbooks and basic teaching aids.
An optimum secondary school will meet the minimum conditions and will have: adequately sized classrooms. Government accountants having read the advice publish minimum guidelines on schools; these enable environmental establishing building costs. Future design plans are audited to ensure. Government ministries continue to press for cost standards to be reduced; the UK government published this downwardly revised space formula in 2014. It said the floor area should be 1050m² + 6.3m²/pupil place for 11- to 16-year-olds + 7m²/pupil place for post-16s. The external finishes were to be downgraded to meet a build cost of £1113/m². A secondary school locally may be called high senior high school. In some countries there are two phases to secondary education and, here the junior high school, intermediate school, lower secondary school, or middle school occurs between the primary school and high school. Names for secondary schools by countryArgentina: secundaria or polimodal, escuela secundaria Australia: high school, secondary college Austria: Gymnasium, Hauptschule, Höhere Bundeslehranstalt, Höhere Technische Lehranstalt Azerbaijan: orta məktəb Bahamas, The: junior high, senior high Belgium: lagere school/école primaire, secundair onderwijs/école secondaire, humaniora/humanités Bolivia: educación primaria superior and educación secundaria and Herzegovina: srednja škola, gimnazija Brazil: ensino médio, segundo grau Brunei: sekolah menengah, a few maktab Bulgaria: cредно образование Canada: High school, junior high or middle school, secondary school, école secondaire, collegiate institute, polyvalente Chile: enseñanza media China: zhong xue, consisting of chu zhong from grades 7 to 9 and gao zhong from grades 10 to 12 Colombia: bachillerato, segunda enseñanza Croatia: srednja škola, gimnazija Cyprus: Γυμνάσιο, Ενιαίο Λύκειο Czech Republic: střední škola, gymnázium, střední odborné učiliště Denmark: gymnasium Dominican Republic: nivel medio, bachillerato Egypt: Thanawya Amma, Estonia: upper secondary school, Lyceum Finland: lukio gymnasium France: collège, lycée Germany: Gymnasium, Realschule, Fachoberschule Greece: Γυμνάσιο, Γενικό Λύκειο, Ενιαίο Λύκειο, Hong Kong: Secondary school Hungary: gimnázium, k
Gremlin
A gremlin is a folkloric mischievous creature, similar to the chupacabra, that causes malfunctions in aircraft or other machinery. Depictions of these creatures vary, they are described or depicted as animals with spiky backs, large strange eyes, small clawed frames that feature sharp teeth. Since World War II, different fantastical creatures have been referred to as gremlins, bearing varying degrees of resemblance to the originals; the term "gremlin" denoting a mischievous creature that sabotages aircraft originates in Royal Air Force slang in the 1920s among the British pilots stationed in Malta, the Middle East, India, with the earliest recorded printed use being in a poem published in the journal Aeroplane in Malta on 10 April 1929. Sources have sometimes claimed that the concept goes back to World War I, but there is no print evidence of this. Although their origin is found in myths among airmen, claiming that the gremlins were responsible for sabotaging aircraft, John W. Hazen states that "some people" derive the name from the Old English word gremian, "to vex", while Carol Rose, in her book Spirits, Fairies and Goblins: An Encyclopedia, attributes the name to a combination of the name of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Fremlin Beer.
An early reference to the gremlin is in aviator Pauline Gower's 1938 novel The ATA: Women with Wings, where Scotland is described as "gremlin country", a mystical and rugged territory where scissor-wielding gremlins cut the wires of biplanes when unsuspecting pilots were about. An article by Hubert Griffith in the servicemen's fortnightly Royal Air Force Journal dated 18 April 1942 chronicles the appearance of gremlins, although the article states the stories had been in existence for several years, with recollections of it having been told by Battle of Britain Spitfire pilots as early as 1940; this concept of gremlins was popularized during World War II among airmen of the UK's RAF units, in particular the men of the high-altitude Photographic Reconnaissance Units of RAF Benson, RAF Wick and RAF St Eval. The flight crews blamed gremlins for otherwise inexplicable accidents which sometimes occurred during their flights. Gremlins were thought at one point to have been enemy sympathies, but investigations revealed that enemy aircraft had similar and inexplicable mechanical problems.
As such, gremlins were portrayed as being equal opportunity tricksters, taking no sides in the conflict, acting out their mischief from their own self-interest. In reality, the gremlins were a form of deflecting blame; this led folklorist John Hazen to note that "the gremlin has been looked on as new phenomenon, a product of the machine age – the age of air". Some experts believe. Author and historian Marlin Bressi stated, "Gremlins, while imaginary, played a important role to the airmen of the Royal Air Force. Gremlin tales helped build morale among pilots, which, in turn, helped them repel the Luftwaffe invasion during the Battle of Britain during the summer of 1940; the war may have had a different outcome if the R. A. F. pilots had allowed Germany's plans for Operation Sea Lion to develop. In a way, it could be argued that gremlins, troublesome as they were helped the Allies win the war." Bressi noted: "Morale among the R. A. F. pilots would have suffered. It was far better to make the scapegoat a fantastic and comical creature than another member of your own squadron."
Author Roald Dahl is credited with getting the gremlins known outside the Royal Air Force. He would have been familiar with the myth, having carried out his military service in 80 Squadron of the Royal Air Force in the Middle East. Dahl had his own experience in an accidental crash-landing in the Western Desert. In January 1942, he was transferred to Washington, D. C. as Assistant Air attaché at the British Embassy. It was there that he wrote his first children's novel, The Gremlins, in which "Gremlins" were tiny men who lived on RAF fighters. In the same novel, Dahl called the wives of gremlins "Fifinellas", their male children "Widgets", their female children "Flibbertigibbets". Dahl showed the finished manuscript to Sidney Bernstein, the head of the British Information Service, who came up with the idea to send it to Walt Disney; the manuscript arrived in Disney's hands in July 1942, he considered using it as material for a live action/animated full-length feature film, offering Dahl a contract.
The film project was changed to an animated feature and entered pre-production, with characters "roughed out" and storyboards created. Disney managed to have the story published in the December 1942 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. At Dahl's urging, in early 1943, a revised version of the story, again titled The Gremlins, was published as a picture book by Random House; the 1943 publication of The Gremlins by Random House consisted of 50,000 copies, with Dahl ordering 50 copies for himself as promotional material for himself and the upcoming film, handing them out to everyone he knew, including the British ambassador in Washington Lord Halifax, the US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who read it to her grandchildren. The book was considered an international success with 30,000 more sold in Australia but initial efforts to reprint the book were precluded by a wartime paper shortage. Reviewed in major publications, Dahl was considered a writer-of-note and his appearances in Hollywood to follow up with the film project were met with notices in Hedda Hopper's columns.
The film project was reduced to an animated short and cancelled in August 1943, when c
Knight
A knight is a man granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch, bishop or other political or religious leader for service to the monarch or a Christian church in a military capacity. In Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors. During the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior. A knight was a vassal who served as an elite fighter, a bodyguard or a mercenary for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings; the lords trusted the knights. Knighthood in the Middle Ages was linked with horsemanship from its origins in the 12th century until its final flowering as a fashion among the high nobility in the Duchy of Burgundy in the 15th century; this linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry and related terms. The special prestige accorded to mounted warriors in Christendom finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Muslim world, the Greek hippeis and Roman eques of classical antiquity.
In the late medieval period, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many nations. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, the Matter of Britain, relating to the legend of King Arthur and his Round Table. Today, a number of orders of knighthood continue to exist in Christian Churches, as well as in several Christian countries and their former territories, such as the Roman Catholic Order of the Holy Sepulchre and Order of Malta, the Protestant Order of Saint John, as well as the English Order of the Garter, the Swedish Royal Order of the Seraphim, the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav; each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is granted by a head of state, monarch, or prelate to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement, as in the British honours system for service to the Church or country.
The modern female equivalent in the United Kingdom is Dame. The word knight, from Old English cniht, is a cognate of the German word Knecht; this meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages. Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which meant knight; the meaning of cniht changed over time from its original meaning of "boy" to "household retainer". Ælfric's homily of St. Swithun describes a mounted retainer as a cniht. While cnihtas might have fought alongside their lords, their role as household servants features more prominently in the Anglo-Saxon texts. In several Anglo-Saxon wills cnihtas are left either money or lands. In his will, King Æthelstan leaves his cniht, eight hides of land. A rādcniht, "riding-servant", was a servant on horseback. A narrowing of the generic meaning "servant" to "military follower of a king or other superior" is visible by 1100; the specific military sense of a knight as a mounted warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years' War.
The verb "to knight" appears around 1300. An Equestrian was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire; this class is translated as "knight". In the Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the English cavalier: Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier, Portuguese cavaleiro, Romanian cavaler; the Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider: German Ritter, Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, "to ride", in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh-. In ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris; some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, some armies, such as those of the Ostrogoths, were cavalry.
However, it was the Franks who fielded armies composed of large masses of infantry, with an infantry elite, the comitatus, which rode to battle on horseback rather than marching on foot. When the armies of the Frankish ruler Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Arab invasion at the Battle of Tours in 732, the Frankish forces were still infantry armies, with elites riding to battle but dismounting to fight. In the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin; the first knights appeared during the reign of Charlemagne in the 8th century. As the Carolingian Age progressed, the Franks were on the attack, larger numbers of warriors took to their horses to ride with the Emperor in his wide-ranging campaigns of conquest. At about this time the Franks remained on horseback to fight on the battlefield as true cavalry rather than mounted in
Judith Hoag
Judith Hoag is an American actress. She is best known for portraying April O'Neil in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film in 1990, as Gwen Cromwell Piper in the Disney Channel Halloweentown television films series, she is known for her role as Tandy Hampton in the ABC drama series Nashville. Hoag has acted professionally since 1986; that year, she got one of her first roles as a series regular in the ABC daytime soap opera Loving in the role of Charlotte'Lotty' Bates Alden. After leaving Loving in 1988, Hoag began her career in primetime television, in next year won female lead role on CBS comedy series Wolf; the series was canceled after a single season. In 1990 she starred in films A Matter of Cadillac Man. Hoag is most well known for her role as April O'Neil in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film; the film turned out to be a huge success at the box office making over $135 million in North America, over $66 million outside North America, for a worldwide total of over $200 million, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of 1990 worldwide.
After Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame, Hoag starred in a number of pilots not picked up as a series, appeared in several television films, including Fine Things by Danielle Steel, Switched at Birth opposite Bonnie Bedelia. Hoag starred as Gwen Cromwell Piper in the Disney Channel Halloweentown television films series: Halloweentown, Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, Halloweentown High and Return to Halloweentown, she appeared in the films Armageddon, Flying By, I Am Number Four and Hitchcock. Hoag has made over 60 guest appearances on television shows, including Quantum Leap, Melrose Place, The Nanny, She Wrote, The X-Files, Six Feet Under, Ghost Whisperer, NYPD Blue, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, CSI: NY, Criminal Minds, Sons of Anarchy, The Middle and among other notable television series. From 2006 to 2011, Hoag appeared as Cindy Price on the HBO drama series Big Love. In 2012, Hoag was cast in a recurring role in the ABC drama series Nashville created by Academy Award winner Callie Khouri.
She plays the poised and driven Tandy Hampton and protégé of Lamar Wyatt. She referees Lamar's contentious relationship, trying to calm the waters. Hoag filmed a cameo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, but the scene with her was cut from the final film. Hoag was born in Massachusetts; as a teen, Hoag attended Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts where she concentrated on acting. In 1988, she married actor Vince Grant, they have a son and a daughter. The couple divorced in 2016. Judith Hoag on Twitter Judith Hoag on IMDb
Clifton Davis
Clifton Duncan Davis is an American actor, songwriter and pastor. Davis starred on the television shows That's My Amen. Davis wrote several hits for The Jackson 5, including "Never Can Say Goodbye" and "Lookin' Through the Windows." The Supremes bought “Here Comes the Sunrise” from Davis after their Vegas performance and included that song in their “Touch” album released in 1971. Davis was born in Chicago, the son of Thelma van Putten Langhorn, a nurse, Toussaint L'Ouverture Davis, a Baptist minister, he was raised in New York. Clifton Davis is a graduate of Pine Forge Academy. In a piece he wrote for Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, he described the racism he suffered growing up during the pre-Civil Rights Act era. Before finding fame in acting, Davis worked as a songwriter, most famously penning The Jackson 5's No. 2 hit "Never Can Say Goodbye." He appeared on Broadway as Valentine in Galt MacDermot and John Guare's musical Two Gentlemen of Verona, based on the Shakespeare comedy of that name.
He starred as barber Clifton Curtis in the mid-1970s television show That's My Mama with Theresa Merritt, Theodore Wilson and Ted Lange. Davis' romantic interest with songstress and Broadway performer Melba Moore led to his co-starring role on her musical variety television show, he made a guest appearance on the third episode of the first season of The Bobby Vinton Show in September 1975, singing "I've Got The Music In Me" and "Never Can Say Goodbye." He sang the Polish lyrics with Vinton to the show's "My Melody of Love" theme song. A triple heart bypass survivor, he participated in the "superstars" celebrity TV sports competitions of the seventies, in addition to making several appearances on the popular celebrity game show Match Game, he appeared in the film Scott Joplin in 1977. He made numerous appearances on several incarnations of Pyramid from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. From 1986 to 1991, he co-starred with Sherman Hemsley, as the Reverend Ruben Gregory, in the NBC sitcom Amen, which ran for five seasons.
Davis released one acclaimed studio recording in 1991 on Benson Records titled Say Amen. He played the mayor of Miami in the 1999 film Any Given Sunday. Davis has continued his stage work, starring in Toronto and on Broadway in Aladdin, playing the Sultan of Agrabah. Davis holds a BA in Theology from Oakwood University and a Master of Divinity degree from Andrews University. From 1987 to 1989, he was an Associate Pastor of the Loma Linda University SDA Church in southern California. For the last twenty-five years, he has been an active part of Youthville, USA a children's services organization, he served as co-founder and co-pastor of Welcome Christian Center in California. Davis is a licensed minister by New York, New York, he has had an interdenominational ministry for over 30 years. He has served as Advisory Board Chairman, he is the emcee and host of The Most Soulful Sound, an annual gospel choir competition in Raleigh, North Carolina. He hosts an annual celebrity golf tournament in Elizabeth City, NC at Elizabeth City State University, where he served as Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement.
Since the end of 2005 Davis has held the position of Executive Director for Welcome America, a non-profit organization located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that produces the largest Fourth of July celebration each year in the nation. Davis is a frequent guest host on Trinity Broadcasting Network. Davis hosted the Gospel Superfest TV show from 2000 to 2008, syndicated by United Television. Davis is the author of an autobiographical essay entitled "A Mason-Dixon Memory" in which he recounts his experiences as an eighth grader dealing with prejudice on a trip to a southern state. Clifton Davis on IMDb Clifton Davis at the Internet Broadway Database Clifton Davis at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
Werewolf
In folklore, a werewolf or lycanthrope is a human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction and on the night of a full moon. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy, are Petronius and Gervase of Tilbury; the werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during the medieval period. From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs spread to the New World with colonialism. Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches, in the course of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century; the persecution of werewolves and the associated folklore is an integral part of the "witch-hunt" phenomenon, albeit a marginal one, accusations of lycanthropy being involved in only a small fraction of witchcraft trials.
During the early period, accusations of lycanthropy were mixed with accusations of wolf-riding or wolf-charming. The case of Peter Stumpp led to a significant peak in both interest in and persecution of supposed werewolves in French-speaking and German-speaking Europe; the phenomenon persisted longest in Bavaria and Austria, with persecution of wolf-charmers recorded until well after 1650, the final cases taking place in the early 18th century in Carinthia and Styria. After the end of the witch-trials, the werewolf became of interest in folklore studies and in the emerging Gothic horror genre; the trappings of horror literature in the 20th century became part of the horror and fantasy genre of modern popular culture. The word werewolf continues a late Old English werwulf, a compound of were "man" and wulf "wolf"; the only Old High German testimony is in the form of a given name, although an early Middle High German werwolf is found in Burchard of Worms and Berthold of Regensburg. The word or concept does not occur in medieval German poetry or fiction, gaining popularity only from the 15th century.
Middle Latin gerulphus Old Frankish * wariwulf. Old Norse had the cognate varúlfur, but because of the high importance of werewolves in Norse mythology, there were alternative terms such as ulfhéðinn. In modern Scandinavian kveldulf "evening-wolf" after the name of Kveldulf Bjalfason, a historical berserker of the 9th century who figures in the Icelandic sagas; the term lycanthropy, referring both to the ability to transform oneself into a wolf and to the act of so doing, comes from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος lukánthropos. The word does occur in ancient Greek sources, but only in Late Antiquity and only in the context of clinical lycanthropy described by Galen, where the patient had the ravenous appetite and other qualities of a wolf. Use of the Greek-derived lycanthropy in English occurs in learned writing beginning in the 16th century, at first explicitly for clinical lycanthropy, i.e. the type of insanity where the patient imagines to have transformed into a wolf, not in reference to real shape-shifting.
Use of lycanthropy for supposed shape-shifting is much introduced ca. 1830. Slavic uses the term vlko-dlak "wolf-skin", paralleling the Old Norse ulfhéðinn. However, the word is not attested in the medieval period; the Slavic term was loaned into modern Greek as Vrykolakas. Baltic has related Lithuanian vilkolakis and vilkatas, Latvian vilkatis and vilkacis; the name vurdalak for the Slavic vampire is a corruption due to Alexander Pushkin, widely spread by A. K. Tolstoy in his novella The Family of the Vourdalak. Greek λυκάνθρωπος and Germanic werewulf are parallel inasmuch as the concept of a shapeshifter becoming a wolf is expressed by means of a compound "wolf-man" or "man-wolf"; the werewolf folklore found in Europe harks back to a common development during the Middle Ages, arising in the context of Christianisation, the associated interpretation of pre-Christian mythology in Christian terms. Their underlying common origin can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European mythology, where lycanthropy is reconstructed as an aspect of the initiation of the warrior class.
This is reflected in Iron Age Europe in the Tierkrieger depictions from the Germanic sphere, am
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, is a celebration observed in several countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints and all the faithful departed, it is believed that many Halloween traditions originated from ancient Celtic harvest festivals the Gaelic festival Samhain. Some believe, that Halloween began as a Christian holiday, separate from ancient festivals like Samhain. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, as well as watching horror films. In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although elsewhere it is a more commercial and secular celebration.
Some Christians abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, soul cakes. The word is of Christian origin; the word "Hallowe'en" means "Saints' evening". It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve. In Scots, the word "eve" is and this is contracted to e'en or een. Over time, Hallow Een evolved into Hallowe'en. Although the phrase "All Hallows'" is found in Old English "All Hallows' Eve" is itself not seen until 1556. Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots. Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that "there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived". Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which comes from the Old Irish for'summer's end'."Samhain was the first and most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and was celebrated on 31 October – 1 November in Ireland and the Isle of Man.
A kindred festival was held at the same time of year by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany. For the Celts, the day began at sunset. Samhain and Calan Gaeaf are mentioned in some of Welsh literature; the names have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century, are still the Gaelic and Welsh names for Halloween. Samhain/Calan Gaeaf marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the'darker half' of the year. Like Beltane/Calan Mai, it was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned; this meant the Aos Sí, the'spirits' or'fairies', could more come into this world and were active. Most scholars see the Aos Sí as "degraded versions of ancient gods whose power remained active in the people's minds after they had been replaced by religious beliefs"; the Aos Sí were both respected and feared, with individuals invoking the protection of God when approaching their dwellings.
At Samhain, it was believed that the Aos Sí needed to be propitiated to ensure that the people and their livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left outside for the Aos Sí; the souls of the dead were said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Places were set by the fire to welcome them; the belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures throughout the world. In 19th century Ireland, "candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating and games would begin". Throughout Ireland and Britain, the household festivities included rituals and games intended to foretell one's future regarding death and marriage. Apples and nuts were used in these divination rituals, they included apple bobbing, nut roasting, scrying or mirror-gazing, pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, dream interpretation, others.
Special bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Their flames and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers, were used for divination. In some places, torches lit from the bonfire were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them, it is suggested that the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun, helping the "powers of growth" and holding back the decay and darkness of winter. In Scotland, these bonfires and divination games were banned by
