Don’t try this in your own half-timbered, dark and drafty 17^th century Tudor home.

One of the many traditions of All Hallows Eve in the England of that time held that if you walked down your stairway backward while holding a mirror, when you got to the bottom the face appearing in the mirror would be your next lover.

These days, it’s far more likely that the face you see in the mirror might be the ambulance medic who comes to help you after you tumble headfirst down the stairs.

All Hallow’s Eve in Tudor and Stuart England was a cornucopia bearing all the fruits and produce of the otherworld: dead souls walked among the living and made mischief if the opportunity arose.  A “soul cake” or some other treat, perhaps of the liquid variety, might satisfy and send them on their way, so the thinking went. It should be borne in mind that in the 17^th century, belief in ghosts, witchcraft, conjurors, and various supernatural visitations was commonplace, and the evil that they could do or the warnings that they could bear were not to be taken lightly.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet took the ghost of his father quite seriously; his was not a story that the most unlettered groundling at the Globe would find the least bit puzzling.  King James I, who came from Scotland to succeed Elizabeth I on the throne of England in 1603, had written a volume on demonology.  For him, there was simply no denying the seriousness of the matter.  So sycophantic interests among royal courtiers were also well-served by holding such beliefs: think as the king thinks, and you will go far.

It seems that the English may have frequently made cautionary tales out of stories of witchcraft, ghosts, and demonic evil-doing that supposedly occurred in various parts of continental Europe, since tales naturally tend to grow more exaggerated in the retelling through the fog of great distances.