The Mediaeval Stage, Vol I (of 2)

[349] A Saxon formula abrenuntiationis of the ninth century (Müllenhoff-Scherer, Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus dem 8.-12. Jahrhundert, 1892, No. li) specifically renounces ‘Thuner ende Uuôden ende Saxnôte ende allum thêm unholdum thê hira genôtas sint.’ Anglo-Saxon laws and council decrees contain frequent references to sacrifices and other lingering remnants of heathenism. Cf. Councils of Pincanhale and Cealcythe (787), c. 19 (Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 458) ‘si quid ex ritu paganorum remansit, avellatur, contemnatur, abiiciatur.’ Council of Gratlea (928), c. 3 (Wilkins, i. 205) ‘diximus ... de sacrificiis barbaris ... si quis aliquem occiderit ... ut vitam suam perdat.’ Council of London (1075) (Wilkins, i. 363) ‘ne offa mortuorum animalium, quasi pro vitanda animalium peste, alicubi suspendantur; nec sortes, vel aruspicia, seu divinationes, vel aliqua huiusmodi opera diaboli ab aliquo exerceantur.’ Also Leges of Wihtred of Kent (696), c. 12 (Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 235), and other A.-S. laws quoted by Kemble, i. 523.

[350] Penitential of Theodore (Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 189), i. 15, de Cultura Idolorum; Penitential of Egbert (H.-S. iii. 424), 8, de Auguriis vel Divinationibus.

[351] Pearson, ii. 1 (Essay on Woman as Witch); cf. A.-S. spells in Kemble, i. 528, and Cockayne, Leechdoms (R. S.), iii. 35, 55. Early and mediaeval Christianity did not deny the existence of the heathen gods, but treated them as evil spirits, demons.

[352] An Essex case of 664 has just been quoted. Kemble, i. 358, gives two later ones from the Chronicle of Lanercost. In 1268 ‘cum hoc anno in Laodonia pestis grassaretur in pecudes armenti, quam vocant usitate Lungessouth, quidam bestiales, habitu claustrales non animo, docebant idiotas patriae ignem confrictione de lignis educere et simulachrum Priapi statuere, et per haec bestiis succurrere.’ In 1282 ‘sacerdos parochialis, nomine Johannes, Priapi prophana parans, congregatis ex villa puellulis, cogebat eis, choreis factis, Libero patri circuire.’ By Priapus-Liber is probably meant Freyr, the only Teutonic god known to have had Priapic characteristics (Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Eccles. Pontif. iv. 26 in M. G. H. Script. vii. 267).

[353] Grimm, i. 5, 11, 64, 174; iii. xxxiv-xlv; Keary, 90; Pearson, ii. 16, 32, 42, 243, 285, 350. The Virgin Mary succeeds to the place of the old Teutonic goddess of fertility, Freyja, Nerthus. So elsewhere does St. Walpurg. The toasts or minni drunk to Odin and Freyja are transferred to St. John and St. Gertrude. The travels of Odin and Loki become the travels of Christ and St. Peter. Many examples of the adaptation of pre-existing customs to Christianity will be found in the course of this book. A capitulary of Karlmann, drawn up in 742 after the synod of Ratisbon held by Boniface in Germany, speaks of ‘hostias immolatitias, quas stulti homines iuxta ecclesias ritu pagano faciunt sub nomine sanctorum martyrum vel confessorum’ (Boretius, Capitularia Reg. Franc. i. 24 in M. G. H.; Mansi, xii. 367). At Kirkcudbright in the twelfth century bulls were killed ‘as an alms and oblation to St. Cuthbert’ (F. L. x. 353).

[354] In the present state of Gaulish and still more of Irish studies, only a glimmering of possible equations between Teutonic and Keltic gods is apparent.

[355] Recent ethnological research is summed up in G. Vacher de Lapouge, L’Aryen (1899); W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe (1900); A. H. Keane, Ethnology (1896); Man, Past and Present (1899); J. Deniker, The Races of Man (1900); G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race (1901). The three racial types that, in many pure and hybrid forms, mainly compose the population of Europe may be distinguished as (1) Homo Europaeus, the tall blonde long-headed (dolichocephalic) race of north Europe, (including Teutons and red-haired ‘Kelts’), to which the Aryan speech seems primarily to have belonged; (2) Homo alpinus, the medium coloured and sized brachycephalic (round-headed) race of central Europe; (3) Homo meridionalis (Lapouge) or mediterranensis (Keane), the small dark dolichocephalic race of the Mediterranean basin and the western isles (including dark ‘Kelts’). During the formative period of European culture (2) was probably of little importance, and (1) and (3) are possibly of closer racial affinity to each other than either of them is to (2).

[356] Gomme, Ethnology in Folk-lore, 21; Village Community, 69; Report of Brit. Ass. (1896), 626; F. L. Congress, 348; F. L. x. 129, ascribes the fire customs of Europe to Aryans and the water customs to the pre-Aryans. A. Bertrand, Religion des Gaulois, 68, considers human sacrifice characteristically pre-Aryan. There seems to me more hope of arriving at a knowledge of specific Mediterranean cults, before the Aryan intermixture, from a study of the stone amulets and cup-markings of the megaliths (Bertrand, op. cit. 42) or from such investigations into ‘Mycenaean’ antiquity as that of A. J. Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult (1901). The speculations of Nietzsche, in A Genealogy of Morals and elsewhere, as to the altruistic ‘slave’ morality of the pre-Aryan and the self-regarding morality of the conquering Aryan ‘blond beast’ are amusing or pitiful reading, according to one’s mood.

[357] Frazer, G. B. i. 9 ‘The fundamental principles on which it [savage magic] is based would seem to be reducible to two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which have once been in contact, but have ceased to be so, continue to act upon each other as if the contact still persisted. From the first of these principles, the savage infers that he can produce any desired effect merely by imitating it; from the second he concludes that he can influence at pleasure and at any distance any person of whom, or any thing of which, he possesses a particle. Magic of the latter sort, resting as it does on the belief in a certain secret sympathy which unites indissolubly things that have once been connected with each other may appropriately be termed sympathetic in the strict sense of the term. Magic of the former kind, in which the supposed cause resembles or simulates the supposed effect, may conveniently be described as imitative or mimetic.’ Cf. Jevons, 31 ‘The savage makes the generalization that like produces like; and then he is provided with the means of bringing about anything he wishes, for to produce an effect he has only to imitate it. To cause a wind to blow, he flaps a blanket, as the sailor still whistles to bring a whistling gale.... If the vegetation requires rain, all that is needed is to dip a branch in water, and with it to sprinkle the ground. Or a spray of water squirted from the mouth will produce a mist sufficiently like the mist required to produce the desired effect; or black clouds of smoke will be followed by black clouds of rain.’ I do not feel that magic is altogether a happy term for this sort of savage science. In its ordinary sense (the ‘black art’), it certainly contains a large element of what Dr. Frazer distinguishes from magic as religion, ‘a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.’ True, these powers are not to whom the orthodox religion is directed, but the approach to them is religious in the sense of the above definition. Such magic is in fact an amalgam of charms, which are Dr. Frazer’s ‘magic,’ and spells, which are his ‘religion.’ But so are many more recognized cults.

[358] Some facts of European animal worship are dealt with in two important recent papers, one by S. Reinach in Revue celtique, xxi. 269, the other by N. W. Thomas, in F. L. xi. 227. The relation of such worship to the group of savage social institutions classed as totemism is a difficult and far from solved problem, which cannot be touched upon here.

[359] Gummere, 39; Caesar, de B. G. iv. 1. 7; vi. 22. 2; Tacitus, Germ. 26.

[360] Schräder-Jevons, 281, says that the Indo-Europeans begin their history ‘acquainted with the rudiments of agriculture,’ but ‘still possessed with nomadic tendencies.’ He adds that considerable progress must have been made before the dispersion of the European branches, and points out that agriculture would naturally develop when the migratory hordes from the steppes reached the great forests of central Europe. For this there would be two reasons, the greater fertility of the soil and the narrowed space for pasturage. On the other hand, V. Hehn, Culturpflanzen und Haustiere, and Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, i. 16, find the traces of agriculture amongst the undivided Indo-Europeans very slight; the word yáva-ζέα, which is common to the tongues, need mean nothing more than a wild cereal.

[361] Jevons, 240, 255; Pearson, ii. 42; O. T. Mason, Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture, 14.

[362] Burne-Jackson, 352, 362; Rhys, C. F. i. 312; F. L. v. 339; Dyer, 133; Ditchfield, 70; cf. ch. vi. One of the hills so visited is the artificial one of Silbury, and perhaps the custom points to the object with which this and the similar ‘mound’ at Marlborough were piled up.

[363] Frazer, ii. 261, deals very fully with the theriomorphic corn-spirits of folk belief.

[364] On these triads and others in which three male or three female figures appear, cf. Bertrand, 341; A. Maury, Croyances et Légendes du Moyen Âge (1896), 6; Matronen-Kultus in Zeitschrift d. Vereins f. Volkskultur, ii. 24. I have not yet seen L. L. Paine, The Ethnic Trinities and their Relation to the Christian Trinity (1901).

[365] Mogk, iii. 333; Golther, 298; Grimm, iv. 1709; Kemble, i. 335; Rhys, C. H. 282; H. M. Chadwick, Cult of Othin (1899).

[366] Mogk, iii. 366; Golther, 428.

[367] Mogk, iii. 374; Golther, 488; Tille, Y. and C. 144; Bede, de temp. ratione, c. 15 (Opera, ed. Giles, vi. 179) ‘Eostur-monath qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum, quae Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant, nomen habuit; a cuius nomine nunc paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae solemnitatis vocantes.’ There seems no reason for thinking with Golther and Tille, that Bede made a mistake. Charlemagne took the name Ôstarmánoth for April, perhaps only out of compliment to the English, such as Alcuin, at his court.

[368] A Charm for unfruitful or bewitched land (O. Cockayne, Leechdoms of Early England, R. S. i. 399); cf. Grimm, i. 253; Golther, 455; Kögel, i. 1. 39. The ceremony has taken on a Christian colouring, but retains many primitive features. Strips of turf are removed, and masses said over them. They are replaced after oil, honey, barm, milk of every kind of cattle, twigs of every tree, and holy water have been put on the spot. Seed is bought at a double price from almsmen and poured into a hole in the plough with salt and herbs. Various invocations are used, including one which calls on ‘Erce, Erce, Erce, Eorthan modor,’ and implores the Almighty to grant her fertility. Then the plough is driven, and a loaf, made of every kind of corn with milk and holy water, laid under the first furrow. Kögel considers Erce to be derived from ero, ‘earth.’ Brooke, i. 217, states on the authority of Montanus that a version of the prayer preserved in a convent at Corvei begins ‘Eostar, Eostar, Eordhan modor.’ He adds: ‘nothing seems to follow from this clerical error.’ But why an error? The equation Erce-Eostre is consistent with the fundamental identity of the light-goddess and the earth-goddess.

[369] Tacitus, Ann. i. 51; Mogk, iii. 373; Golther, 458; cf. ch. xii.

[370] Gomme, Village Community, 157; B. C. A. Windle, Life in Early Britain, 200; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 142, 337, 346.

[371] I have followed in many points the views on Teutonic chronology of Tille, Deutsches Weihnacht (1893) and Yule and Christmas (1899), which are accepted in the main by O. Schräder, Reallexicon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, s.vv. Jahr, Jahreszeiten, and partly correct those of Weinhold, Ueber die deutsche Jahrtheilung (1862), and Grotefend, Die Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters (1891).

[372] In Scandinavia the winter naturally began earlier and ended later. Throughout, Scandinavian seasons diverged from those of Germany and the British Isles. In particular the high summer feast and the consequent tripartition of the year do not seem to have established themselves (C. P. B. i. 430). Further south the period of stall-feeding was extended when a better supply of fodder made it possible (Tille, Y. and C. 56, 62; Burne-Jackson, 380).

[373] Cf. ch. xi, where the winter feasts are discussed in more detail.

[374] Grimm, ii. 675, 693, 762, notes the heralds of summer.

[375] Jahn, 34; Mogk, iii. 387; Golther, 572; Schräder-Jevons, 303. The Germans still knew three seasons only when they came into contact with the Romans; cf. Tacitus, Germ. 26 ‘annum quoque ipsum non in totidem digerunt species: hiems et ver et aestas intellectum ac vocabula habent, autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur.’ I do not agree with Tille, Y. and C. 6, that the tripartition of the year, in this pre-calendar form, was ‘of foreign extraction.’ Schräder shows that it is common to the Aryan languages. The Keltic seasons, in particular, seem to be closely parallel to the Teutonic. Of the three great Keltic feasts described by Rhys, C. H. 409, 513, 676; C. F. i. 308, the Lugnassad was probably the harvest feast, the Samhain the old beginning of winter feast, and the Beltain the high summer feast. The meaning of ‘Beltain’ (cf. N. E. D. s.v. Beltane) seems quite uncertain. A connexion is possible but certainly unproved with the Abelio of the Pyrenean inscriptions, the Belenus-Apollo of those of the eastern Alps, and, more rarely, Provence (Röscher, Lexicon, s.v. Belenus; Holder, Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, s.vv. Belenus, Abelio; Ausonius, Professores, iv. 7), or the Bel of Bohemia mentioned by Allso (ch. xii). The Semitic Baal, although a cult of Belus, found its way into the Roman world (cf. Appendix N, No. xxxii, and Wissowa, 302), is naturally even a less plausible relation. But it is dear to the folk-etymologist; cf. e.g. S. M. Mayhew, Baalism in Trans. of St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society, i. 83.

[376] Tille, Y. and C. 7, 148, suggests an Egyptian or Babylonian origin, but the equation of the Gothic Jiuleis and the Cypriote ἰλαῖος, ἰουλαῖος, ἰουλίηος, ἰούλιος as names for winter periods makes a Mediterranean connexion seem possible.

[378] Grimm, ii. 615, notes that Easter fires are normal in the north, Midsummer fires in the south of Germany. The Beltane fires both of Scotland and Ireland are usually on May 1, but some of the Irish examples collected by J. Jamieson, Etym. Dict. of the Scottish Language, s. v., are at midsummer.

[379] Tille, Y. and C. 71; Rhys, C. H. 419. The primitive year was thermometric, not astronomic, its critical moments, not the solstices, a knowledge of which means science, but the sensible increase and diminution of heat in spring and autumn. The solstices came through Rome. The Sermo Eligii (Grimm, iv. 1737) has ‘nullus in festivitate S. Ioannis vel quibuslibet sanctorum solemnitatibus solstitia ... exerceat,’ but Eligius was a seventh-century bishop, and this Sermo may have been interpolated in the eighth century (O. Reich, Über Audoen’s Lebensbeschreibung des heiligen Eligius (1872), cited in Rev. celtique, ix. 433). It is not clear that the un-Romanized Teuton or Kelt made a god of the sun, as distinct from the heaven-god, who of course has solar attributes and emblems. In the same Sermo Eligius says ‘nullus dominos solem aut lunam vocet, neque per eos iuret.’ But the notion of ‘domini’ may be post-Roman, and the oath is by the permanent, rather than the divine; cf. A. de Jubainville, Intr. à l’Étude de la Litt. celt. 181. It is noticeable that German names for the sun are originally feminine and for the moon masculine.

[380] Mogk, iii. 393; Golther, 584; Jahn, 84; Caspari, 35; Saupe, 7; Hauck, ii. 357; Michels, 93. The ploughing feast is probably the spurcalia of the Indiculus and of Eadhelm, de laudibus virginitatis, c. 25, and the dies spurci of the Hom. de Sacrilegiis. This term appears in the later German name for February, Sporkele. It seems to be founded on Roman analogy from spurcus, ‘unclean.’ Pearson, ii. 159, would, however, trace it to an Aryan root spherag, ‘swell,’ ‘burst,’ ‘shoot.’ Bede, de temp. rat. c. 15, calls February Sol-monath, which he explains as ‘mensis placentarum.’ September, the month of the harvest-festival, is Haleg-monath, or ‘mensis sacrorum.’

[381] Pfannenschmidt, 244; Brand, ii. 1; Ditchfield, 130; Burne-Jackson, 439; Burton, Rushbearing, 147; Schaff, vi. 544; Duchesne, 385. The dedication of churches was solemnly carried out from the fourth century, and the anniversary observed. Gregory the Great ordered ‘solemnitates ecclesiarum dedicationum per singulos annos sunt celebrandae.’ The A.-S. Canons of Edgar (960), c. 28 (Wilkins, i. 227), require them to be kept with sobriety. Originally the anniversary, as well as the actual dedication day, was observed with an all night watch, whence the name vigilia, wakes. Belethus, de rat. offic. (P. L. ccii. 141), c. 137, says that the custom was abolished owing to the immorality to which it led. But the ‘eve’ of these and other feasts continued to share in the sanctity of the ‘day,’ a practice in harmony with the European sense of the precedence of night over day (cf. Schräder-Jevons, 311; Bertrand, 267, 354, 413). An Act of Convocation in 1536 (Wilkins, iii. 823) required all wakes to be held on the first Sunday in October, but it does not appear to have been very effectual.

[382] S. O. Addy, in F. L. xii. 394, has a full account of ‘Garland day’ at Castleton, Derbyshire, on May 29; cf. F. L. xii. 76 (Wishford, Wilts); Burne-Jackson, 365.

[383] The classification of agricultural feasts in U. Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche, seems throughout to be based less on the facts of primitive communal agriculture, than on those of the more elaborate methods of the later farms with their variety of crops.

[384] Frazer, i. 193; ii. 96; Brand, i. 125; Dyer, 223; Ditchfield, 95; Philpot, 144; Grimm, ii. 762; &c., &c. A single example of the custom is minutely studied by S. O. Addy, Garland Day at Castleton, in F. L. xii. 394.

[385] A. B. Gomme, ii. 507; Hartland, Perseus, ii. 187; Grimm, iv. 1738, 1747; Gaidoz, Un vieux rite médical (1893).

[386] Tacitus, Germania, 40.

[387] Vigfusson and Ungar, Flateyjarbok, i. 337; Grimm, i. 107; Gummere, G. O. 433; Mogk, iii. 321; Golther, 228.

[388] Sozomenes, Hist. Eccles. vi. 37. Cf. also Indiculus (ed. Saupe, 32) ‘de simulacro, quod per campos portant,’ the fifth-century Vita S. Martini, c. 12, by Sulpicius Severus (Opera, ed. Halm, in Corp. Script. Eccl. Hist. i. 122) ‘quia esset haec Gallorum rusticis consuetudo, simulacra daemonum, candido tecta velamine, misera per agros suos circumferre dementia,’ and Alsso’s account of the fifteenth-century calendisationes in Bohemia (ch. xii).

[390] Cf. Representations (Chester, London, York). There were similar watches at Nottingham (Deering, Hist. of Nott. 123), Worcester (Smith, English Gilds, 408), Lydd and Bristol (Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, i. 148), and on St. Thomas’s day (July 7) at Canterbury (Arch. Cant. xii. 34; Hist. MSS. ix. 1. 148).

[391] Harris, 7; Hartland, Fairy Tales, 71.

[394] Dyer, 275; Ditchfield, III; cf. the phrase ‘in and out the windows’ of the singing game Round and Round the Village (A. B. Gomme, s. v.).

[395] M. Deloche, Le Tour de la Lunade, in Rev. celtique, ix. 425; Bérenger-Féraud, i. 423; iii. 167.

[397] Duchesne, 276; Usener, i. 293; Tille, Y. and C. 51; W. W. Fowler, 124; Boissier, La Religion romaine, i. 323. The Rogations or litaniae minores represent in Italy the Ambarvalia on May 29. But they are of Gallican origin, were begun by Mamertus, bishop of Vienne (†470), adapted by the Council of Orleans (511), c. 27 (Mansi, viii. 355), and required by the English Council of Clovesho (747), c. 16 (Haddan-Stubbs, iii. 368), to be held ‘non admixtis vanitatibus, uti mos est plurimis, vel negligentibus, vel imperitis, id est in ludis et equorum cursibus, et epulis maioribus.’ Jahn, 147, quotes the German abbess Marcsuith (940), who describes them as ‘pro gentilicio Ambarvali,’ and adds, ‘confido autem de Patroni huius misericordia, quod sic ab eo gyrade terrae semina uberius provenient, et variae aeris inclementiae cessent.’ Mediaeval Rogation litanies are in Sarum Processional, 103, and York Processional (York Manual, 182). The more strictly Roman litania major on St. Mark’s day (March 25) takes the place of the Robigalia, but is not of great importance in English folk-custom.

[398] Injunctions, ch. xix, of 1559 (Gee-Hardy, Docts. illustrative of English Church History, 426). Thanks are to be given to God ‘for the increase and abundance of his fruits upon the face of the earth.’ The Book of Homilies contains an exhortation to be used on the occasion. The episcopal injunctions and interrogatories in Ritual Commission, 404, 409, 416, &c., endeavour to preserve the Rogations, and to eliminate ‘superstition’ from them; for the development of the notion of ‘beating of bounds,’ cf. the eighteenth-century notices in Dyer, Old English Social Life, 196.

[399] The image is represented by the doll of the May-garland, which has sometimes, according to Ditchfield, 102, become the Virgin Mary, with a child doll in its arms, and at other times (e. g. Castleton, F. L. xii. 469) has disappeared, leaving the name of ‘queen’ to a particular bunch of flowers; also by the ‘giant’ of the midsummer watch. The Salisbury giant, St. Christopher, with his hobby-horse, Hob-nob, is described in Rev. d. T. P. iv. 601.

[400] Grimm, i. 257; Golther, 463; Mogk, iii. 374; Hahn, Demeter und Baubo, 38; Usener, Die Sintfluthsagen, 115. There are parallels in south European custom, both classical and modern, and Usener even derives the term ‘carnival,’ not from carnem levare, but from the currus navalis used by Roman women. A modern survival at Fréjus is described in F. L. xii. 307.

[401] Ditchfield, 103; Transactions of Devonshire Association, xv. 104; cf. the Noah’s ship procession at Hull (Representations, s. v.).

[402] Brand, ii. 223; Grimm, ii. 584; Elton, 284; Gomme, Ethnology, 73; Hartland, Perseus, ii. 175; Haddon, 362; Vaux, 269; Wood-Martin, ii. 46; Bérenger-Féraud, iii. 291; R. C. Hope, Holy Wells; M.-L. Quiller-Couch, Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall (1894); J. Rhys, C. F. i. 332, 354, and in F. L. iii. 74, iv. 55; A. W. Moore, in F. L. v. 212; H. C. March, in F. L. x. 479 (Dorset).

[403] A. B. Gomme, s. v.; Haddon, 362.

[404] Schaff, iii. 247; Duchesne, 281, 385; Rock, iii. 2. 101, 180; Maskell, i. cccxi; Feasey, 235; Wordsworth, 24; Pfannenschmidt, Das Weihwasser im heidnischen und christlichen Cultus (1869). The Benedictio Fontium took place on Easter Saturday, in preparation for the baptism which in the earliest times was a characteristic Easter rite. The formulae are in York Missal, i. 121; Sarum Missal, 350; Maskell, i. 13.

[405] Frazer, iii. 237; Gomme, in Brit. Ass. Rep. (1896), 626; Simpson, 195; Grenier, 380; Gaidoz, 16; Bertrand, 98; Gummere, G. O. 400; Grimm, ii. 601; Jahn, 25; Brand, i. 127, 166; Dyer, 269, 311, 332; Ditchfield, 141; Cortet, 211.

[406] To this custom may possibly be traced the black-a-vised figures who are persistent in the folk ludi, and also the curious tradition which makes May-day especially the chimney-sweeps’ holiday.

[407] The reasons given are various, ‘to keep off hail’ (whence the term Hagelfeuer mentioned by Pfannenschmidt, 67), ‘vermin,’ ‘caterpillars,’ ‘blight,’ ‘to make the fields fertile.’ In Bavaria torches are carried round the fields ‘to drive away the wicked sower’ (of tares?). In Northumberland raids are made on the ashes of neighbouring villages (Dyer, 332).

[409] I know of no English Easter folk-fires, but St. Patrick is said to have lit one on the hill of Slane, opposite Tara, on Easter Eve, 433 (Feasey, 180).

[410] Schaff, v. 403; Duchesne, 240; Rock, iii. 2. 71, 94, 98, 107, 244; Feasey, 184; Wordsworth, 204; Frazer, iii. 245; Jahn, 129; Grimm, ii. 616; Simpson, 198. The formulae of the benedictio ignis and benedictio cereorum at Candlemas, and the benedictio ignis, benedictio incensi, and benedictio cerei on Easter Eve, are in Sarum Missal, 334, 697; York Missal, i. 109; ii. 17. One York MS. has ‘Paschae ignis de berillo vel de silice exceptus ... accenditur.’ The correspondence between Pope Zacharias and St. Boniface shows that the lighting of the ignis by a crystal instead of from a lamp kept secretly burning distinguished Gallican from Roman ceremonial in the eighth century (Jaffé, 2291). All the lights in the church are previously put out, and this itself has become a ceremony in the Tenebrae. Ecclesiastical symbolism explained the extinction and rekindling of lights as typifying the Resurrection. Sometimes the ignis provides a light for the folk-fire outside.

[411] Belethus (†1162), de Div. Offic. c. 137 (P. L. ccii. 141), gives three customs of St. John’s Eve. Bones are burnt, because (1) there are dragons in air, earth, and water, and when these ‘in aere ad libidinem concitantur, quod fere fit, saepe ipsum sperma vel in puteos vel in aquas fluviales eiiciunt, ex quo lethalis sequitur annus,’ but the smoke of the bonfires drives them away; and (2) because St. John’s bones were burnt in Sebasta. Torches are carried, because St. John was a shining light. A wheel is rolled, because of the solstice, which is made appropriate to St. John by St. John iii. 30. The account of Belethus is amplified by Durandus, Rationale Div. Offic. (ed. corr. Antwerp, 1614) vii. 14, and taken in turn from Durandus by a fifteenth-century monk of Winchelscombe in a sermon preserved in Harl. MS. 2345, f. 49 (b).

[412] Gaidoz, 24, 109; Bertrand, 122; Dyer, 323; Stubbes, i. 339, from Naogeorgos; Usener, ii. 81; and the mediaeval calendar in Brand, i. 179.

[413] Gomme, in Brit. Ass. Rep. (1896), 636 (Moray, Mull); F. L. ix. 280 (Caithness, with illustration of wood used); Kemble, i. 360 (Perthshire in 1826, Devonshire).

[414] Grimm, ii. 603; Kemble, i. 359; Elton, 293; Frazer, iii. 301; Gaidoz, 22; Jahn, 26; Simpson, 196; Bertrand, 107; Golther, 570. The English term is need-fire, Scotch neidfyre, German Nothfeuer. It is variously derived from nôt ‘need,’ niuwan ‘rub,’ or hniotan ‘press.’ If the last is right, the English form should perhaps be knead-fire (Grimm, ii. 607, 609; Golther, 570). Another German term is Wildfeuer. The Gaelic tin-egin is from tin ‘fire,’ and egin ‘violence’ (Grimm, ii. 609). For ecclesiastical prohibitions cf. Indiculus (Saupe, 20) ‘de igne fricato de ligno, i. e. nodfyr’; Capit. Karlmanni (742), c. 5 (Grimm, ii. 604) ‘illos sacrilegos ignes quos niedfyr vocant.’

[415] Gaidoz, 1; Bertrand, 109, 140; Simpson, 109, 240; Rhys, C. H. 54. The commonest form of the symbol is the swastika, but others appear to be found in the ‘hammer’ of Thor, and on the altars and statues of a Gaulish deity equated in the interpretatio Romana with Jupiter. There is a wheel decoration on the barelle or cars of the Gubbio ceri (Bower, 4).

[416] Brand, i. 97; Dyer, 159; Ditchfield, 78. Eggs are used ceremonially at the Scotch Beltane fires (Frazer, iii. 261; Simpson, 285). Strings of birds’ eggs are hung on the Lynn May garland (F. L. x. 443). In Dauphiné an omelette is made when the sun rises on St. John’s day (Cortet, 217). In Germany children are sent to look for the Easter eggs in the nest of a hare, a very divine animal. Among the miscellaneous Benedictions in the Sarum Manual, with the Ben. Seminis and the Ben. Pomorum in die S^ti Iacobi are a Ben. Carnis Casei Butyri Ovorum sive Pastillarum in Pascha and a Ben. Agni Paschalis, Ovorum et Herbarum in die Paschae. These Benedictions are little more than graces. The Durham Accounts, i. 71-174, contain entries of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century payments ‘fratribus et sororibus de Wytton pro eorum Egsilver erga festum pasche.’

[417] Tw. N. i. 3. 42 ‘He’s a coward and a coystrill, that will not drink to my niece till his brains turn o’ the toe like a parish-top.’ Steevens says ‘a large top was formerly kept in every village, to be whipt in frosty weather, that the peasants might be kept warm by exercise and out of mischief while they could not work.’ This is evidently a ‘fake’ of the ‘Puck of commentators.’ Hone, E. D. B. i. 199, says ‘According to a story (whether true or false), in one of the churches of Paris, a choir boy used to whip a top marked with Alleluia, written in gold letters, from one end of the choir to the other.’ The ‘burial of Alleluia’ is shown later on to be a mediaeval perversion of an agricultural rite. On the whole question of tops, see Haddon, 255; A. B. Gomme, s. v.

[418] Leber, ix. 391; Barthélemy, iv. 447; Du Tilliot, 30; Grenier, 385; Bérenger-Féraud, iii. 427; Belethus, c. 120 ‘Sunt nonnullae ecclesiae in quibus usitatum est, ut vel etiam episcopi et archiepiscopi in coenobiis cum suis ludant subditis, ita ut etiam se ad lusum pilae demittant. atque haec quidem libertas ideo dicta est decembrica ... quamquam vero magnae ecclesiae, ut est Remensis, hanc ludendi consuetudinem observent, videtur tamen laudabilius esse non ludere’; Durandus, vi. 86 ‘In quibusdam locis hac die, in aliis in Natali, praelati cum suis clericis ludunt, vel in claustris, vel in domibus episcopalibus; ita ut etiam descendant ad ludum pilae, vel etiam ad choreas et cantus, &c.’ Often the ball play was outside the church, but the canons of Evreux on their return from the procession noire of May 1, played ‘ad quillas super voltas ecclesiae’; and the Easter pilota of Auxerre which lasted to 1538, took place in the nave before vespers. Full accounts of this ceremony have been preserved. The dean and canons danced and tossed the ball, singing the Victimae paschali. For examples of Easter hand-ball or marbles in English folk-custom, cf. Brand, i. 103; Vaux, 240; F. L. xii. 75; Mrs. Gomme, s. v. Handball.

[419] Brand, i. 93; Burne-Jackson, 335. A Norfolk version (F. L. vii. 90) has ‘dances as if in agony.’ On the Mendips (F. L. v. 339) what is expected is ‘a lamb in the sun.’ The moon, and perhaps the sun also, is sometimes ‘wobbly,’ ‘jumping’ or ‘skipping,’ owing to the presence of strata of air differing in humidity or temperature, and so changing the index of refraction (Nicholson, Golspie, 186). At Pontesford Hill in Shropshire (Burne-Jackson, 330) the pilgrimage was on Palm Sunday, actually to pluck a sprig from a haunted yew, traditionally ‘to look for the golden arrow,’ which must be solar. In the Isle of Man hills, on which are sacred wells, are visited on the Lugnassad, to gather ling-berries. Others say that it is because of Jephthah’s daughter, who went up and down on the mountains and bewailed her virginity. And the old folk now stop at home and read Judges xi (Rhys, C. F. i. 312). On the place of hill-tops in agricultural religion cf. p. 106, and for the use of elevated spots for sun-worship at Rome, ch. xi.