My father always remembered Guy Fawkes day, mainly because of the poem.
“Please to remember
The Fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Ever should be forgot.”
How a little boy in New York state learned this British poem, I’m not sure; I suspect his nanny, who I also believe taught him to like treacle tart and to wear an orange tie to the St. Patrick’s Day parade. At any rate he taught the poem to us, and for most of my life I was the only person I knew who celebrated Guy Fawkes day even a little bit. We never burnt an effigy or had fireworks, but while living in Canada I found a recipe for the traditional cake Parkin and have one in the oven as I write.
This year, though, it looks as if the spirit of Guy Fawkes is alive in the land; sort of a combination feast of misrule and political event. Which makes me wonder how many other figures from the past are just waiting in the wings to be brought back?
The blue-skinned winter hag, the Cailleach, is the one I find 
myself thinking about as winter approaches. Here’s Wikipedia’s take on part of her rituals:
In Scotland and Ireland, the first farmer to finish the grain harvest made a corn dolly, representing the Cailleach (also called “the Carlin or Carline”[8]), from the last sheaf of the crop. The figure would then be tossed into the field of a neighbor who had not yet finished bringing in their grain. The last farmer to finish had the responsibility to take in and care for the corn dolly for the next year, with the implication they’d have to feed and house the hag all winter. Competition was fierce to avoid having to take in the Old Woman.[9]
Wouldn’t this be a good semester-ending celebration? I can see it now – the first person to finish their grading sneaking up to someone else’s office, throwing in an effigy made of gradesheets, or perhaps of the failing papers, and snickering as they run down the hall.
But the fun and games of the corn doll seem to be covering up something darker. The Cailleach seems a representation of fecklessness and the want that follows it; also a representation of the prudent’s lack of sympathy for the feckless. “I’ve got my corn in,” say the prudent farmers. “You’ll have to feed the old hag all winter, ha ha! Serves you right!” Perhaps if Guy Fawkes has become an emblem of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Cailleach would be an emblem of one of our smugger political groupings. If there were one that combined both smug self-righteousness and voracious demands on the poor during already hard times.
