Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/368

 CATALOGUE OF BRAND MATERIAL.

The accumulation of Notes on Calendar Customs for the intended new edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities has now reached a point when it seems to the Brand Committee desirable to draw up a Classified Catalogue of them, as a preliminary to the proposed revision ; and the Council have sanctioned the publication of such a catalogue in Folk-Lore. The first instalment, dealing with the series of Moveable Feasts from Shrovetide to Whit- suntide and Corpus' Christi, begins below. It is not an Abstract or Digest of the material gathered, but a mere list of notes, a sort of Table of Contents. References have not. been given — mainly to save space — but will of course appear in the finished work.

Readers are invited to study the Catalogue in the light of their own local knowledge, and to inform the Secretary of the Society whenever they find omissions, either of details of ceremonial, or of the names of localities where any given custom prevails. Definite negative evidence is also much desired.

It may be advisable to call attention to the fact that the Move- able Feasts are lufiar festivals, regulated by the spring moons. They pivot on the full moon of Easter, which is that occurring next after the 21st of March, and extend over seven or eight weeks before and after it. The supposed influence of the moon on growth and increase should be borne in mind in any considera- tion of them.

Shrove Tuesday, falling between six and seven weeks befoie Easter, is naturally the next Tuesday after the February new moon. The season of Christmas was in olden days variously reckoned to conclude either at Candlemas or at Shrovetide. This seems to explain the first item on our list.

The arrangement of this Catalogue of the stores of materials in