Sunderland's historic Halloween traditions, including how a turnip helped you find love

Halloween and Sunderland: They've got some unusual links which stretch back centuries.

We all know about apple bobbing and trick or treating, but what about mashed potato, shirt sleeves and hazelnuts.

And have you heard the one about the cabbage patch and how it helped you find your husband or wife.

Sharon Vincent has and she shared it with the Echo.

By the light of a turnip lantern

Sharon has been researching some wonderful Halloween traditions and we could not resist a further look.

To discover their future spouse, young people would go out into the garden after dark - either blindfolded or using only the dim light of a turnip lantern - to show them the way.

Each one would pull a cabbage or kale stalk out of the ground.

The amount of soil still clinging to the roots indicated how much their dowry would be.

The nuts way to predict your marriage

The stalks were then placed over the doorway and the names of the future spouses were indicated by the names of the next people to walk through the door.

Predicting the future using nuts was another popular Halloween pastime. Young people would place two hazelnuts in the grate, one named after the girl and the other after her lover.

If the nuts crackled and jumped away from each other, the couple would be separated but if the two nuts burned and blazed together, the couple were sure to be married!

If a girl eats an apple by candlelight in front of a mirror on Halloween, she will see the ghostly reflection of her future husband peeping over her shoulder.

Mashed potatoes and marriage

Another custom that was sure to summon one’s life partner from the ether was to wet a shirt sleeve and hang it before the fire to dry.

Lie in bed and watch the sleeve until midnight when the apparition of the future husband or wife will come in and turn the sleeve over to dry the other side.

Many dinner tables at Halloween included a dish of mashed potatoes containing a ring, a button and a threepenny piece.

Each person was served a portion of mashed potatoes. The finder of the ring would be the first married; the finder of the button will never be married and the finder of the coin will be rich one day.

Thrills and spooky chills

How about the three dishes game. Each participant is blindfolded.

Next, one of the dishes is filled with clean water, one with dirty water and one dish is left empty.

All three are placed on the hearth in front of the fire. The participants are brought forward to dip their fingers into one of the bowls.

If they dip into the clean water, they will marry a fair youth or a maiden; dirty water, they will marry a widow or widower; empty dish, they are destined to remain an old maid or bachelor.

Sharon told us: "During the nineteenth century Halloween in the northern counties was considered to be just as important and as exciting as Christmas and an excuse to throw a party - but this party had added thrills and spooky chills.

Our Halloween links to Scotland

"As Scottish people migrated into England looking for employment, they brought their customs with them. Robert Burns’ poem ‘Halloween’ described the Scottish traditions associated with All Hallows Eve back in 1785 and these were still being practiced in Sunderland in the early years of the twentieth century.

"Some of the traditions were harmless fun involving items plucked from the natural world – while others called on darker forces in the hope of predicting the future."

Our thanks go to Sharon who is known for her previous works including Portraits of the East End, which has some stories about the East End of Sunderland.

It included the tale of the day the air was filled with black puddings.

Which old traditions have been passed down through your family?

Tell us more by emailing [email protected]