Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/316

 2 86 Souliug, Clcuienting, and Catterniiig.

social as well as its economic side. We see this still in the case of Christmas, which brings Christmas holidays and amusements, Christmas services and charities (Christmas in the churches, as the newspapers have it), and also Christmas bills. Unless we grasp the fact of the many- sided character of the annual festivals of our forefathers, we cannot hope to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the observances connected with them. It is from this point of view that I would discuss the local November customs in question.

I need hardly take up your time by reminding you that the ancient Celts (and probably also the Teutons, but Teutons are out of fashion just now!) reckoned only two seasons in the year, and began it with the winter season in November, not with the summer season in May. This, obviously, is the practical husbandman's calendar, begin- ning the year with ploughing and ending it after harvest. Vestiges of this ancient reckoning are still traceable in Wales, in Scotland, and in the north of England, where houses are let and servants — especially /rt/';«-servants — are engaged for the year or half-year at the beginning of one or the other of these two seasons. And in the Isle of Man Sir John Rhys tells us {C.Fl., 316) he has even known it seriously debated whether the ist of January or the 1st of November is the true New-Year's Day.

There can, moreover, be little doubt that even in pagan times " November Night " was already an annual Feast of the Dead long before it was transformed by the Church into the two consecutive festivals of All Saints and All Souls — Hallowmas or Hollantide in popular speech. In most of the more Celtic parts of the island bonfires are still, or were but recently, lighted on the hills on Hallow E'en ; and in Ireland the belief that the spirits of the dead are then abroad is still firmly held. In England it was customary to ring the church bells all night on Hallowmas Eve, till the practice was forbidden by an Order of Council