What to challenge my readers with this week? We've done quotations (twice), geography, two letter words, portraits, Shakespearean mini-synopses and 'guess the year'.
We bloggers like being topical so I'm going for a Halloween quiz this week.
Your score for questions 7 and 8 will be determined by your answers posted as comments.
Q1. Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows E'en, the day before the Christian All Saints Day. Which Pope inaugurated that Day?
Q2. Halloween incorporated traditions of the Samhain festival - such as wearing costumes to ward off ghosts - of what religion/culture?
Q3. There are longstanding connections between Halloween and witches. What animal is most associated with witches?
Q4. The most recent witch trial worldwide was where and when?
Q5. Which artist painted the most famous depiction of a Witches' Sabbath?
Q6. What unusual brass instrument did Hector Berlioz use in the final movement of his Symphonie Fantastique - "Songe d'une nuit du sabbat" (Dream of a Witches' Sabbath)?
Q7. What do witches use their broomsticks for?
Q8. What is the correct, government covid-approved response to scary trick-or-treaters at your front door?
Testing
ReplyDeleteGotcha
DeleteWorking hard on this one. Answers soon
ReplyDeleteQ1. Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows E'en, the day before the Christian All Saints Day. Which Pope inaugurated that Day?
ReplyDeleteThat’s complicated. Pope Boniface IV reburied bones of martyrs after invaders ransacked the catacombs beneath the pantheon. Bede is the source for this.
The Anglo-Saxon theologian Alcuin observed the feast in 800 and Rome adopted the date in the ninth century.
Q2. Halloween incorporated traditions of the Samhain festival - such as wearing costumes to ward off ghosts - of what religion/culture?
Purportedly early Celtic paganism, but sources are pretty much non existent and are probably a mixture of Victorian mythologising and 1960s New Age.
Q3. There are longstanding connections between Halloween and witches. What animal is most associated with witches?
Glossy black cats, although Shakespeare has the witches saying ‘thrice the brindled cat hath mewed’ so torties as well.
Q4. The most recent witch trial worldwide was where and when?
1918. America. Of course.
Q5. Which artist painted the most famous depiction of a Witches' Sabbath?
Goya
Q6. What unusual brass instrument did Hector Berlioz use in the final movement of his Symphonie Fantastique - "Songe d'une nuit du sabbat" (Dream of a Witches' Sabbath)?
Ophicleides. No idea what it is
Q7. What do witches use their broomsticks for?
Flying, or teaching naughty husbands how to sweep the floor. And because Dysons don’t work.
Q8. What is the correct, government covid-approved response to scary trick-or-treaters at your front door?
Ensure social distancing by providing sweets in separate bags laced with poppy juice to keep those who consume them in bed until the end of lockdown.
Alternatively, show a picture of Cummings and Johnson to scare them into submission.