Samhainn.

1888 J. Rhys Lect. Origin & Growth Relig. illustr. by Celtic Heathendom v. 518 The Samhain feast..was, like the Greek Apaturia, partly devoted to business..otherwise the feast, which occupied, not only Samain or the first of November, but also the three days before and the three days after it, was given up to the usual games.

1904 W. B. Yeats Stories of Red Hanrahan 1 The barn where some of the men were sitting on Samhain Eve.

1910 J. M. Synge Deirdre of Sorrows i. 5 And it raining since the night of Samhain.

1917 J. M. Clark Vocab. Anglo-Irish vii. 27 Irish folk-lore has kept alive words of such classic associations as..Samhain and shanahus..which mean..‘All-Hallowtide’ (Nov. 1) and ‘a friendly chat’ respectively.

1949 J. A. MacCulloch Celtic & Scandinavian Relig. i. viii. 58 Samhain, which means ‘summer end’, naturally pointed to the fact that the powers of blight, typified by winter, were beginning their reign. But it may have been partly a harvest festival.

1957 W. R. Kermack Sc. Highlands 153 At Samhain (Hallowe'en, 31st October, the beginning of Winter) the Lewismen made libation to the sea-god Shony, who could send them plenty of seaweed to manure their fields.

1958 T. G. E. Powell Celts iii. 117 At Samain, sacrifices were certainly offered although no material descriptions have survived.

1968 New Larousse Encycl. Mythol. 236/1 The [Celtic] year began on what is now the first of November with the feast of Samain... The ordinary people felt less sanguine about the possibility that on the eve of Samain the people of the síde left their domain and wandered in the world of man.

1970 Q. Rev. Guernsey Soc. 26 60 These four were the feast of Beltainn the great Sungod in May; mid-summer, mid-August..and Samhainn or Hallowmass (November 1).