Magic and mystery

October brings the first of the frosts, bewitching mist, the turning of leaves and a host of other- worldly visitors

- By John Lewis-Stempel

HOW do you define October? By its smells, perhaps: the cottage woodsmoke curling blue in the evening sky, the whiff of spent shotgun cartridges, the decaying oak leaves in the copse. These are mysteried and Catholic, redolent of the incense of pre-Reformation Mass, aromas of another age. Of all the months of the year, October carries the past in its hours, a past with secrets and miracles.

October's mists are a veil through which profundities may be glimpsed, yet not grasped. Hallowe'en these days is a cheap commercial trick, but was once a night of medieval mischief. Long before the Middle Ages, the last week of October was marked by bonfires, primitive protests against the impending darkness of winter, as well as against the supernatural spirits whose realm is the night. Witches and their ilk.

In October comes the first proper frost, which arrives as silently as the winter migrant buntings in the corn stubble and woodcock down in the dingle by the brook. The people of the past, who had no understanding of avian migration, believed that birds transformed according to the seasons, either into other birds or into hibernation. Hibernation: the inexplicable stasis, where the living are the dead. I sympathise with the people of old; the bird books label the woodcock's brown-and-white, flecked-and-striped feathers as 'crypsis'; 'magick' would be closer to the mark. The woodcock's rufous plumage blends so exactly with the leaf litter of the dingle floor that the bird might be made of it.