I’ve never really been into Halloween, but now that we’ve got a child it seems like a good time to embrace it. There seems to be a universal understanding that at this liminal time of year, the barriers between the worlds of the living and the dead are at their most porous, whether it’s Samhain, el Dia de los Muertos, or All Hallow’s Eve.

I’ve been a bit quiet recently because I have been working on a Hallowe’en costume for my daughter. Although it has caused a bit of perplexity among the unimaginative, I opted to go for a crow, figuring it would be a bit visually distinctive.

More specifically, she is the Morrigan – an Irish ancestor goddess embodied as a crow, who is mysterious and terrifying in equal measure – casting the most extraordinary poetic prophecies in the Old Irish rosc verse, which is archaic, obscure and almost monosyllabically sparse. You can find out more at the most amazing Story Archaeology Podcast. 

Anyway, here is our little crow. She has a cardigan with a black feather boa sewn into it, a headband with small black feathers glued on, a little black tutu, grey tights and a beak made of a painted styrofoam cone stuck to a dummy. Her clawed feet were papier mache, but didn’t dry in time to make it into the costume.