souling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of soul.

   Whole families went souling across the parish, knocking for cakes and small coins.

   Souling late into the evening, the village poor collected enough to last the week.

   Note

   Of the three meanings of the verb soul, two are obsolete: giving something a soul, and feeding or nourishing. So as a verb, souling today means going out to beg on All Souls' Day. It sits most naturally after go or out: went souling, out souling. There it shades into the name of the custom. The verb describes people doing it, and the noun names the practice itself.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The practice of giving and receiving soul cakes on All Souls' Day, usually by groups going from door to door.

   Much like modern trick-or-treating, except the door-to-door reward was a small cake offered in exchange for prayers.

   In many northern parishes, souling marked the start of November as surely as the first frost.

   Her grandmother remembered souling as a chance for poorer families to gather food and a few coins.

   Note

   A custom whose name is a simple recipe: soul plus -ing, turning the soul of All Souls' Day into an activity. As the name of the practice it takes no plural and usually no article (people kept up souling, remembered souling). The act of setting out to do it, as in went souling, belongs to the verb form, which shares this spelling exactly.

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