Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/36

 22 and sometimes playing up to a country folk dance or at some other popular entertainment or at fairs and on festive occasions. I remind you of the quacks and astrologers appearing at the fairs with their gruesome stories and wonderful cures, with their knowledge of the stars, casting horoscopes, making venesection at certain days, and performing all kinds of marvellous feats of leechcraft; and what about the jesters, and what about the pedlars and jugglers, and what about the outlaws running for sanctuary from country to country, or from place to place, and then the stately merchants on land and sea with their foreign merchandise and wondrous tales? What about the sailor bringing home outlandish animals and birds, monkeys and parrots, and no less wonderful yarns of foreign nations and distant lands? Thus we have so many elements which alone would suffice to furnish sufficient instruction and edification to the people of the time, channels through which tales, legends, and a large amount of popular literature could find their way to the most distant corners. Of course many of the customs and beliefs still prevailing may be of local origin, grown up through local associations of ideas, or, in some cases, remnants of ancient forms of worship, of which they are unrecognised relics. For examples we need not even go far afield or remount the stream of time. Since the Reformation many Catholic customs have lost here their purely religious character, and have become popular customs. Take the ancient "All-hallow Even." How many customs are there not still kept on that evening, lighted tapers and cracking of nuts and other practices, looked upon as superstitions, which in olden times were very important functions. The day was connected with solemn practices for the rest of the souls of the dead, and many of these practices that still survive can easily be traced to more ancient beliefs and to still more ancient practices, which carry us back to the worship of the dead. Or, if we turn