Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/329

 Sou/iiiQ-, Clinicnting, and Cattcruing. 299

progress of civilization in the Middle Ages. Thus St. Clement and St. Katharine come into prominence, and especially into local prominence. Then comes the period of deca}'. The theological changes of the sixteenth cen- tury shatter the religious side of the kindly old customs, while simultaneously the centralizing despotism of the time crushes the guilds which did so much to maintain them ; and the economic changes of succeeding centuries and of a civilization that is continually growing more and more complicated deprive the several dates, once so im- portant, of any real significance. The old observances dwindle away, or are only kept up by "the most con- servative part of the population, the children," wherever good-natured elders still allow them to benefit by them.

C. S. BURNE.