soul or heaven, we can well imagine that the dog, which already betokened death, should, when they came to frame the myth, be conceived as the guide which was waiting for the soul to take it to heaven, and that the belief thus perpetuated by the myth might survive to the latest ages. It at all events militates against the exclusively Aryan nature of the belief, and exemplifies the extraordinary coincidence of ideas among different people, that the Esquimaux lay a dog's head by the grave of a child, for "the soul of a dog can find its way everywhere, and will show the ignorant babe the way to the land of souls!"*

We have abundant evidence in the practices to this very day, or till lately, prevalent in England and Europe, that the worship of the sun or its representative, fire, a higher and therefore a later form of totemism than the worship of plants or animals, once formed part of early Aryan religion. The passing of children through the fire is not only a Semitic custom, but extends wherever the human mind has attained to the idea of purification and sacrifice. Some North American tribes used to burn to the sun a man-offering in the spring, to the moon a woman-offering in the autumn, expressing thereby their sense of the blessings of light and a desire for their continuance. And traces of such fire-worship and of its accompanying human sacrifices lasted in Europe into the very heart of this century, and in many places still survive. The similarity that exists between them, both in their seasons and mode of observance, even if not conclusive of their actual relationship, illustrates the marvellous sameness of ideas which may be found among people in widely remote districts of the globe.

The three great festivals of the Druids took place on Mayday Eve, on Midsummer Eve, and on All Hallow-e'en. On those days went up from cairns, toothills, and Belenian heights fires and sacrifices to the sun-god Beal and from such fires the lord of the neighbourhood would take the entrails of the sacrificed animal, and, walking barefoot over the ashes, carry them to the Druid who presided over the ceremonies. These fires have descended to us as the famous Beltane fires, lit still, or till lately, in Ireland, Scotland, North England, and Cornwall, on the eve of the summer solstice and at the equinoxes, usually on hill tops, with rejoicing and merriment and leaping through the flames on the part of all ages and sexes of the population.† There is reason to think that this

* Sir J. Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, p. 409, quoted from Crantz.

There are several derivations for Beltane or Bealteine: 1. From Baal or Belus, the Phoenician god, the worship being supposed to be of Phoenician origin; 2. from Baldur, one of the gods of Valhalla who represented the Sun; (3) from lá=day, teine = fire, and Beal the name of some god, but not Belus: (4) from Paleteine, Pales' fire, the worship being identified with that of the Roman goddess Pales, who presided over cattle and pastures, and to whom, on the 21st of April, prayers and offerings were made. At the Palilia shepherds purified their flocks by sulphur and fires of olive and pine wood, and presented the goddess with cakes of millet and milk, whilst the people leaped thrice through straw fires kindled in a row. Yet we should probably

leaping through the flames is a relic of the time when men fell victims to them. For in the Highlands, where at the Beltane feast an oatmeal cake is toasted and portions of it drawn for blindfold by the company as they sit in a trench round a grass table, whosoever is the drawer of that portion which has been purposely toasted black is devoted to Baal to be sacrificed, and must leap perforce three times through the flames. In the same country it is, or was, customary on Yeule or Christmas Eve to burn in a cartload of lighted peat the stump of an old tree, which went by the name of Callac Nollic, or Christmas Old Wife. And in several Continental traditions we find the memory of a sacrifice still adhering to Midsummer Eve, or St. John the Baptist's Vigil. On that day, in Livonia, one or two old boats were burned to the songs and dances of young and old; whilst at Reichenbach, in the Voightland, a May-pole, planted on the green, was, after similar festivities, thrown into the water. On Midsummer Eve many watermen still refrain from committing themselves to the Elbe, the Unstrut, or the Elster, from the belief that upon that day those rivers require a sacrifice; and the Saale is avoided for the same reason on Walpurgis, or Mayday Eve as well. From the latter cases we may infer that, where rivers flowed near, a sacrifice by water was substituted for one by fire, which possibly explains the custom so common in many places in connection with these Beltane fires of rolling something lighted down a hill, and, if possible, into a river. At Conz, on the Moselle, a burning wheel was rolled down the hill into the river, and Scotch children at the Beltane feast used to roll their bannocks three times down a hill before consuming them round a good fire of beath and brushwood. So in Swabia, wheels of lighted straw were rolled down the Frauenberg, and on Scheiblen-Sonntag the young people still go by night to a hill, and after dancing and singing round a fire, swing wooden wheels by means of a stick round and round till they are thoroughly alight, and then fling them down the hill. In North Germany, where the fires take place at Easter instead of at Midsummer, lighted tarbarrels are rolled down the Osterberge. The Church, to sanctify these fires, made the day of John the Baptist coincident with Midsummerday, and taught that the heathen customs were symbolical of Christian doctrine. The fires themselves signified the Baptist, that burning and shining light who was to precede the true light; whilst the rolling wheels, as they represented the gradual descent of the sun in heaven after it had reached the highest point, so they illustrated the diminution of the fame of John, who was at first thought to be the real Messiah, till on his own testimony he said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." It has

be right if we connected the Palilia and the Beltanes, not as directly borrowed one from the other, but as co-descendants from one and the same origin.

Mr. Forbes-Leslie speaks of Beltane fires still to be seen in 1865. The Beltane feast proper was on May-day, but the word was also applied to fires kindled in honour of Bel on other days, as on Midsummer Eve, All-Hallow-e'en, and Yeule, now Christmas. (Early Races of Scotland, i. 120–1.)

even been attempted in recent times to show that the Midsummer fires, in spite of all their heathen surroundings, were really of Christian origin, and in some way connected with John the Baptist. The two chief objections to this theory are, the survival of heathen names for the fires, as for instance, among others, the name Himmelsfeuer, and not the usual Johannisfeuer, in one of the districts of Upper Swabia, and also the close analogy, both in the idea and mode of purification, which exists between the Midsummer fire for men and the Needfires for cattle.

Needfires were fires through which cattle were driven if any disease broke out amongst them. Such a fire was lit in Mull in 1767, and was not only the method lately employed in Lower Saxony, but is said to be still actually prevalent in Caithness. Fire was thought to heal, or rather to purify, because it was thought to drive away evil spirits, which in savage estimation cause or constitute natural disease. The essential thing was that all fires in the neighbourhood should be first extinguished and new ones relit by means of friction for the cattle to go through. The virtue lay in the new virgin fire uncontaminated by previous use for any purpose whatsoever; and the Forlorn Fires, which are said to be still lighted in Scotland when any man thinks himself the victim of witchcraft,* agree closely in ceremonial with the Needfires for cattle. A notice having been given to all the householders within the two nearest streams to extinguish all lights and fires on a given morning, the sufferer and his friends on the day cause the emission of new fire by a spinningwheel or other means of friction, and having spread it from some tow to a candle, thence to a torch, and from the torch to a peatload, send it by messengers to the expectant houses. But similar purificatory effects were attributed to the Midsummer fires. As far as their light reached, crops enjoyed immunity from sorcery for a year, and the ashes collected from them were a constant insurance against calamities of all sorts. Leaping through them was held to avert malignant spirits for a year, and in many places not only did men leap, but cattle were driven, through the flames. Hence there is reason to think that the Midsummer fires were simply annual and public Needfires, resembling the yearly harvest feast of the Krikhs of North America, among whom, as among the ancients who annually imported fresh fire from Delos to Lemnos, there was an idea of a new and purified life commencing with a new and pure flame, after all fires, debased by their subservience to human needs, had been first extinguished. The same idea has been found among the Indian tribes of South America. For it was the duty of their high-priests " to guard the Eternal Fire in the Rotunda; and, in the solemn, annual festival of the Busque, when all the fires of the nation were extinguished, the highpriest alone was commissioned, in the temple, to reproduce the celestial spark and give new fire to the community." +

We see, then, in this most remarkable identity of conception between

* Stewart, Popular Superstitions of the Highlanders, p. 149.

+ Jones's Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 21. New York, 1873.

our forefathers and the native tribes of America, that there is nothing exclusively Indo-Germanic in the holiness ascribed to virgin-fire, and that there is no need to ascribe to Phoenician influence customs which occur where such influence is improbable. The wheel ignited by friction of its axle, it has been suggested, was an emblem of the sun, and the old Aryan belief that when the sun was hidden by clouds, its light was extinguished and needed renewing, which could only take place by some god working a "pramantha" in its cold wheel till it glowed again, has been referred to as the possible root of the custom. But here again it is. better to refer the myth to the custom than the custom to the myth, and this, too, on psychological grounds. For the mind can no more produce images without objects of sense than the Israelites were able to make bricks without straw. Every myth, therefore, must presuppose the actual experience of all images employed in its construction.

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It may here be noticed in connection with the sacrificial customs which were once a part of the heathen fire-worship, that the idea of a sacrifice to appease an angry spirit that has caused a disease is still far from extinct. The burial of a live animal is still believed in Wärend and North Sweden to prevent the cattle-plague, and an instance of such a sacrifice to the earth spirits is said to have occurred in Jönköping so recently as 1843. In Cleveland if a cow casts a calf, the untimely product is buried beneath the threshold of the cow byre in order to avert a similar disaster, and a lamb that is dropped dead or dies young is hung in a rowan or a thorn. And in Moray not long ago, whenever a herd of cattle was seized with the murrain, one of them was buried alive, just as in the North-west Highlands and in Cornwall a black cock is buried alive on the spot where a person is first attacked by epilepsy; or, as in Algeria, one is drowned in a sacred well for a similar purpose. A case is even cited in this century of an Englishman who burned a live calf to counteract the attacks of evil spirits.* Near Speier in Germany, if many hens or pigs or ducks died in quick succession, one of them was thrown into the fire, though the idea here seems not to have been to appease the spirit that afflicted, but to burn the spirit that was in, the victim. And, lastly, the Esthonians, in case of fire, used to throw in a black living fowl to appease the flames.

English country boys, when on the sight of a new moon they turn the money in their pockets to ensure a constant supply there, have no idea of the reason that once underlay the practice. But a wide comparison of customs supplies us with a key; for we find everywhere a prevalent mental association between the increase or wane of the moon and the increase or wane of things on earth. Maladies, it is thought, will wane more readily if the medicine be taken in the moon's wane, and wood cut at that time will burn better, just as, on the other hand, crops are more likely to be plentiful if sown whilst the moon is young, and

*Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 63.

marriages more likely to be happy. So in some English counties pigs must be killed at the same season, lest the pork should waste in boiling. In Germany the new moon is the season to enter a new house, or to count money which it is desired may increase; it is also the best time for the father of a family to die, for in the latter half of the month his death would portend the decrease of his whole family. An invalid in face of a waning moon should pray that his pains may diminish with it. Hence, too, the French idea that hair cut in the moon's wane will never grow again, or the similar one in Devonshire and Iceland, that the rest will fall off; and hence probably the popular English belief that the weather of the new moon foreshadows the weather for the month. But are all these fancies relics of old moon-worship, of the existence of which we have other evidence, or simply expressions of that feeling once so prevalent that there existed an intimate sympathy between man and nature, and that everything which affected the former was in some way or another typified by the latter? Analogy seems to favour the latter hypothesis. For instance, all along the East coast of England it is thought that most deaths occur at the fall of the tide, a sympathy being imagined between the ebbing of the water and the ebbing of life; and it is curious that Aristotle and Pliny entertained a similar idea, the former with respect to all animals, the latter only about man; and though Pliny's observation of the fact was instigated by the statement of his predecessor, it is likely that the latter was led to the inquiry by the notoriety of a popular belief. The Cornish idea that deaths are delayed till the ebb-tide, or the Icelandic one that more blood flows from sheep killed while the sea is running out, or that chimneys smoke more if built when the sea is running in, may be cited as similar instances. The inhabitants of Esthonia, if a wolf runs away with a lamb, think, by a kind of sympathy, to cause the wolf to drop it by themselves dropping something out of their pockets. And in parts of England to this day, the bloodstone is the remedy for a bleeding nose, and nettle-tea for a nettle-rash; just as turmeric was once applied to the jaundice on account of its yellow colour, and the lungs of a fox were held good for asthma on account of that animal's respiratory powers.

Water-worship, whether as river, lake, or spring, seems as widely spread as that of trees or other natural objects, and the numerous traditions connected with it form yet another link between our civilised present and our barbarous past. "There is scarcely," says a writer on Lancashire Folk-Lore, "a stream of any magnitude in either Lancashire or Yorkshire, which does not possess a presiding spirit in some part of its course.” * A water-spirit that haunts some stepping-stones near Clitheroe is still believed once in every seven years to require a human life; nor is it long since a farmer in Anglesea had to drain a well belonging to him on account of the damage done by persons resorting thither, under the belief that if they cursed the disease they suffered from and dropped pins about

* Harland and Wilkinson's Lancashire Folk-Lore.