Why 11 November was a day for blood sacrifice rites in Ireland
I had no idea blood sacrifice was still practiced in Ireland right up to the 1930s!
It was ... often a fowl, such as a cock (black in colour) or a goose by the nineteenth century. This ritual, perhaps barbaric and primitive to modern eyes and likely practiced by your rural great grandparents, is described here by Henry Morris: "the killing was a formal affair, generally done by the head of the house, and its blood was spilled in the four corners of the house inside and was sprinkled or daubed on the door posts...the daub on the door posts was not a cross. Sometimes the blood was sprinkled on the threshold also."
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