ONCE again I find myself lamenting the almost total disappearance of the traditional Scots Halloween.

With our neep lanterns, and outfits ransacked from our mothers’ old clothes basket or fathers' old wartime uniforms we sallied forth as guisers to earn sweets, fruit, nuts and pennies by giving wee songs, poems etc in return.

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No pumpkins, no bought outfits, and, what on earth is “Trickery and Treatery”? It may very well be a demand with menaces for giving nothing!

I feel our traditions have been hijacked yet again. I can see that Halloween a la USA has surfaced in Denmark at the expense of their own Halloween type of festival which used to be held in February.

It is indeed a great pity that a pumpkin is easier to hollow out than a neep!

Colin R Stevenson
Strachur, Argyll