Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/443

Rh great deal to do with it. Mr. C. C. Bell, our authority for Nottinghamshire, testifies to the Protestant bigotry which prevailed among the villagers in his younger days. And the Lancashire towns were notoriously Presbyterian in the seventeenth century. In Staffordshire, on the other hand, where the observance of the day is practically confined to boys with squibs and crackers, there are little settlements of hereditary Romanists down to the present time. Whatever be the cause of the variations, the existence of annual bonfires without effigies certainly suggests that the bonfire is an older institution than the effigy-burning, and therefore older than 1605.

Scotland and Ireland were of course little affected by the plot against the English Parliament, and even Wales probably took it philosophically. Accordingly, we do not find the Fifth of November observed outside England. But we do find autumnal bonfires lighted at "Hallowmas," or the Eve and Days of All Saints and All Souls (Oct. 31st, Nov. 1st and 2nd). In North Wales in the early eighteenth century, according to Pennant, a great bonfire was made on Allhallows Even (Oct. 31st) in a conspicuous spot near every house; divination by white stones marked and thrown among the ashes was resorted to, and the family said their evening prayers turning round the dying fire. If a stone were missing in the morning, he or she to whom it belonged would die during the year. In Scotland, in Perthshire, Aberdeen, and Buchan, the fires were kindled for the village