
Contents
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Harvest and Halloween Harvest and Halloween
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Calvinism and the Decline of Superstition Calvinism and the Decline of Superstition
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The Paratext The Paratext
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Stanzas I–X Stanzas I–X
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The Calvinist Intervention (XI–XVI) The Calvinist Intervention (XI–XVI)
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Three Trials of Calvinism (XVII–XXIII) Three Trials of Calvinism (XVII–XXIII)
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Leezie and Uncle John (XXIV–XXVII) Leezie and Uncle John (XXIV–XXVII)
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The End The End
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Note Note
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Works Cited Works Cited
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7 Robert Burns and the Devil: ‘Halloween’
Get accessJohn Burnett was the principal curator of Modern Scottish History at the National Museums of Scotland. His book Riot, Revelry and Rout: Sport in Lowland Scotland before 1860 (Tuckwell Press, 2000) won the Michaelis-Jena Prize for Folklore and Folk Life Studies. John has written extensively on the history of festivity in Scotland.
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Published:22 February 2024
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Abstract
This chapter re-examines Burns’s poem ‘Halloween’, suggesting that rather than folklore with footnotes, it is a satire on the belief that it was possible to foretell who an individual would marry by invoking the help of the Devil. This superstition was held particularly by orthodox Calvinists, who are Burns’s targets, as against the moderates, of whom Burns was one, who were against superstition. The second half of the chapter works through the poem, following the failure of one ritual after another and ending with the disappearance of the Devil and superstition, leaving the characters in an industrializing Scotland with no guides to the future.
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