Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/692

676 Page 521. As to the ancient year common to Celts and Greeks, I have now the authority of Dr. Vigfusson for adding the old Norsemen. Their great feast occupied three days called the Winter Nights, and began on the Saturday falling on or between the 11th and the 18th of October. One feature of the feast was the sacrifice to Frey, the god of good seasons; and besides the toasts drunk to the Anses, as alluded to at p. 653 above, a formal commemoration was made of all deceased friends who had gone into the barrows during the year: compare the Welsh Feast of the Dead, p. 515. It was the time when the sibyl, seated on an elevated seat, chanted the fortunes of the coming year: she was consulted on all kinds of questions, but especially as to the seasons, and above all as to the winter then commencing. On the first night the spirits were abroad, and one instance is recorded of a man being slain by them on his going out then; but this was the night when wizards sat out of doors, who wished to consult the demons of the invisible world. Compare the Welsh and Irish beliefs and practices alluded to at pp. 514-7. Dr. Vigfusson thinks that the feast of the Winter Nights was the original Yule, and that it marked the beginning of the ancient year. The whole question is to be the subject of an excursus in Vigfusson and Powell's forthcoming work on Icelandic Origins. It is to be noticed that the Old Norse year approached the astronomical year more nearly than the Celtic one (p. 419), for the reason,probably,that winter—and therefore the year—commences earlier in Scandinavia than in the continental centre from which the Celts dispersed themselves. Vice versa, the Aryan year may, if the Aryan home was at first in the far North, have been originally astronomical, the calendars of the Celts and other Aryan nations having subsequently deviated from it more and more as those nations acquired new homes in more southern latitudes; nor is the fact to be overlooked, that, according to the Syro-Macedonian calendar and others of kindred origin, the year opened with the beginning of October, however that is to be accounted for.

Page 552: Lugaid Corr (Windisch, Ir. Gram. p. 122) should, mythologically speaking, be identified with the slayer of Cúchulainn. Corr, which probably meant a crane, recalls the cranes