Beltane, Candlemas, and Hallow-e’en were the three great days in all

witch-lore. For, although every Saturday was a witches’ sabbath, when

they held orgies with the devil, their master, near some ruined church,

yet these were their chief days of gathering, when all witches from all

countries were bound to be present. Those who dwelt in distant lands

came across the sea in egg-shells, while those whose homes were within

driving distance merely ordered their brooms; and this is the reason why

all right-minded people break their egg-shell when they have emptied it,

lest the witches should enter therein, and, raising terrible storms,

should wreck poor mariners—a danger much dreaded by the wise old Romans.

These, then, were the seasons when there was mischief in the wind, and

the sons of men needed to guard themselves and their goods against all

crafty attacks from the powers of the air. St. John’s-eve seems to have

been celebrated in much the same way all over Europe. It seems to have

been customary in all towns, Paris and Metz especially, to kindle fires

in the market-place. These were sometimes blessed by the parish priest,

who offered a prayer in the name of St. John—thus adapting the old

heathen festival to Christian use. The young people then leaped over the

flames, and threw flowers and garlands into them, singing, shouting, and

dancing merrily. Even the great folk sometimes joined in the old games.

In Paris a barbarous custom was long observed on this night, and it was

said to be still practised in various French towns in the year 1830,

when the mayor put a number of live cats—a dozen or more—into a large

wicker-basket, which was thrown into one of the bonfires. This, and the

great figures of wickerwork and canvas, which are, or were, annually

made at Douay and Dunkirk, and moved about by men concealed within them,

are obviously traceable to that colossal figure of which Cæsar, Strabo,

and Pliny have left descriptions—a huge image of straw and wicker,

containing fuel, live sheep, other animals, and sometimes human victims,

which was cast by the Druids into a great sacrificial fire amid the

shouts of the people and the noise of unmusical instruments.

In Florence, and other Italian cities, the Midsummer-eve bonfires are, I

believe, still kept up as cheerily as of yore. Some quaint old lines by

Googe describe how this festival was celebrated in Britain:—

“Then doth the joyfull feast of John the Baptist take his turne,

When bonfires great, with loftie flame, in every town doe borne;

And young men round about, with maids, do dance in every street,

With garlands wrought of motherwort, or else with vervain sweete,” &c.

The gathering of the vervaine, or wild verbena, seems to have been as

solemn a mystery as that of the mistletoe itself. He who found it, must

draw a circle round it, and approach it cautiously and secretly. Then,

suddenly plucking it up by the roots, must throw it up in the air, and

straightway make an oblation of money to the earth in atonement for the

theft of an herb so precious. Its leaves sprinkled on the floor before a

feast were supposed to be conducive to mirth; and as a medicine, it

healed both bodily and mental diseases, even reconciling the most bitter

foes. We are told that the old Roman heralds always carried a bunch of

this peace-making herb when sent on any embassy, and that the Greeks and

various Eastern nations employed it in the service of their gods.

In Scotland the Midsummer’s-eve Festival was observed till very recent

times. It was customary to kindle great bonfires near the corn-fields,

and then make the _Deus Sol_ round the fields, with burning torches, to

secure a blessing on the crops. Shaw mentions having frequently seen

this done both in Moray and in the Lowlands in the middle of the last

century. In Cornwall also the feast was till quite lately celebrated in

various villages, and in all probability is still kept up. Great

bonfires blazed, and torchlight processions marched sunwise round the

fires and round the village.

In Ireland too this night was long considered an occasion for rejoicing;

and so late as 1795 a gentleman writes from Dublin to one of the

magazines, describing “the lighting of the fires at midnight in honour

of the sun; the clamours, and other ceremonies, such as strewing the

streets with divers herbs.” Charlotte Elizabeth, describing the huge

bonfires in Ireland, and the scenes she herself witnessed, tells how the

people all danced everlasting jigs to the music of the pipes. This

lasted some hours. Then, when the fire burnt low, _every one present

passed through the fire, and children were thrown across the glowing

embers_. Lord John Scott, speaking of the same festival, says he has

seen parents _force unwilling children to pass through these purifying

Baal fires_! Strange, is it not? to find still lingering in Britain so

exact a counterpart of the great annual festival held in the Deccan,

when (as described by Sir Bartle Frere) huge fires were lighted, through

which devotees ran or jumped. I believe that this practice is now

prohibited, together with divers forms of self-torture; but, of course,

it is still practised in secret, and I myself saw an instance of it in

one of the temples at Benares.

Presumptuous as it may seem to hazard ever so vague a guess at the

origin of any Masonic customs, it is hardly possible to hear of the

celebrations of St. John’s-eve at some of the Scotch lodges without a

vision of _Deisul_ and Fire Worship rising to the mind. Take such an

account as that given by Wade of the customs at Melrose, where, after

electing office-bearers for the coming year, “the brethren walk in

procession three times round the market-cross. After dinner they again

turn out, walking two abreast, each bearing a lighted torch. Preceded by

their banners, the procession again walks three times round the cross,

and then proceeds to the abbey, round which it slowly marches thrice,

making a complete circuit of the building.” The effect of the mystic

torch-lit procession, threading its way through the dark masses of

shadow cast by clustering pillars and dreamy aisles, must be eerie

enough to satisfy the ghosts of the old Druids; but when at last the

procession draws up in a semi-circle round the high altar, where lies

the heart of the Bruce, suddenly the grey ruins stand clearly revealed

in the cold glare of blue lights, and of such flashing fire-works as

would have seemed to our forefathers to betoken some awesome dealings

with the meteors and planet-worlds!

Perhaps the most interesting trace that still remains to us of this

Midsummer homage to the sun is a custom which, for ages unknown, has

been observed at Stonehenge, and which acquires double importance in

these days, when this, and all kindred buildings, are set down as being

either merely sepulchral, or else memorials of old battles. Mr. Wm. Beck

writes, that every year, on 21st June, a number of people assemble on

Salisbury Plain at 3 A.M., in the chill of early dawn, and make for the

circles of Stonehenge, from the centre of which, looking north-east, a

block of stone, set at some distance from the ruin, is so seen that its

top coincides with the line of the horizon, and if no mist prevail, the

sun as it rises on this, the longest day of the year, will be seen

coming up exactly over the centre of the stone, known from this

circumstance as the Pointer. Mr. Beck has himself repeatedly witnessed

this interesting proof of the solar arrangement of the circles of

Stonehenge; has watched the sun thus come up over the Pointer and strike

its first ray through the central entrance to the so-called altar-stone

of the ruin. He points out how this same huge stone is set at such an

angle that at noon it marks the shadow like the gnomon of a sun-dial.

In Yorkshire also some of the old customs still linger. I believe that

at Brimham Crags, near Harrogate, the Midsummer-eve bonfires still blaze

as they have done from time immemorial. It is a rocky hillside, covered

with Druidical remains, and was one of the great strongholds of the old

faith. Its name is said to be a contraction of Beth-Rimmon, under which

name the ancient Irish _worshipped the sun, moon, and stars

collectively_. If this be so, there may be some foundation for the

identification of this worship with that of Rimmon the god of Damascus,

in whose temple Naaman the Syrian craved permission to attend the king,

his master.

That the Bel of the Druids was identical both with Baal and the Molech

of the Ammonites—

“For whom the race of Israel oft forsook

Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar”—

is evident, from every allusion in Holy Scripture to the idolatries of

the Jews; of whom we are told again and again how they made groves, and

set up images under every green tree and on every high hill, and

_worshipped all the host of heaven_, and served Baal, or reared up

altars for Baal. Also how they caused their sons and their daughters to

pass through the fire, and used divination, and enchantments, and

witchcraft, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards; and how, even

in the Temple of the Most High, men knelt between the porch and the

altar, with their back toward the Temple of the LORD, the Sun of

Righteousness, and their faces towards the east, and worshipped, the sun

toward the east.[39]

On the other hand, the reverence with which the holy fire was guarded in

this and many other lands seems almost like a tradition of the worship

of Israel, of that altar of the Most High, whereon the fire was, by

divine command, to be kept “for ever burning,” never to be put out, or

suffered to go out. It was carelessness concerning this sacred flame

which cost the sons of Aaron so dear, when they ventured to offer

incense before the LORD with _strange fire_, which He commanded them

not, so that there went out fire from the LORD and devoured them.[40]

In like manner the precious oil, with which it is recorded that the

Celts, like Hindoos of the present day, anointed their sacred stones,

suggests a parallel not only to the old custom which prompted Jacob to

pour oil upon the stones at Bethel, but also to that holy oil which, by

the Levitical law, it was death for any Israelite to compound for his

own use, as “a perfume, to smell thereto,”[41] but which was to be kept

exclusively as a holy anointing oil, wherewith to anoint the Tabernacle

and all sacred vessels.

In truth, nothing is more strange in the traces of these divers faiths

than to note how closely the false and those which we deem true seem

sometimes to assimilate their ceremonies and their symbols, blending and

intertwining till the mind becomes well-nigh bewildered in the attempt

to separate them. For it is not as though the old idolatries, having

once diverged from the clear stream of truth into a polluted channel of

their own, were thenceforth a thing apart. On the contrary, the very

same outward and visible signs which to the people were one day types of

an abhorrent creed, had but to be invested with some new meaning to

become at once emblematic of all that was most pure and holy. Thus when

Elijah desired to prove to the worshippers of Baal the supreme Divinity

of his Master, the test he chose was that which most directly appealed

to their reverence. “The GOD that answereth by fire, let Him be GOD,”

and the shouts of the people proclaimed that henceforth the very element

that they had held in deepest awe as the representative of Baal was once

more acknowledged as the type of One stronger than he. Again, the

Israelites had scarce forsaken the land of Egypt, among whose many

abominations the worship of living serpents ranked foremost, when, in

the hands of Moses, and by Divine appointment, the Brazen Serpent became

a type of life to be held in such reverence as, ere long, led to a

relapse into the old idolatry. And in later ages it was when idolatrous

systems of dove-worship and fire-worship prevailed in diverse lands,

that the mystic dove, and the cloven tongues came down from heaven,

thenceforth becoming to all Christian people the very types of all they

deem most sacred.

The next great Fire Festival in Britain seems to have occurred on the

1st November, when all fires, save those of the Druids, were

extinguished, and from whose altars only the holy fire must be purchased

by all householders for a certain price. Terrible penalties were in

store for any rash person who dared to kindle a flame from any other

source. This sacred fire was fed with the peeled wood of a certain tree,

and must never be blown with the breath lest it should be polluted.

Precisely similar is the custom which prevails among the Guebres and

Parsees of the present day. All fires being allowed to die out, each

family must procure sacred fire from the temples, wherewith to rekindle

the domestic hearth. In the Talmud it is stated that the Israelites who

were captives in Persia adopted this practice.

The festival is still known in Ireland as Samhein or La Samon, _i.e._,

the Feast of the Sun; and on the eve of the 1st of November all manner

of old games and customs are still observed just as fully as in

Scotland, where, however, though All Saints’ Day is a thing forgotten,

the heathen festival has assumed the name of Hallow-e’en.

Of the countless varieties of Hallow-e’en games, it would be superfluous

to write, as they are so well known. Only it is curious to notice that

they all retain some trace of old practices of divination. First, the

mystic apple comes into play—the apple that so often appears in Celtic

fairy lore. These swim in water, and each person in turn must catch one

in his mouth. The apple when caught must be carefully peeled, and the

long strip of peel passed thrice, _sunwise_, round the head, and thrown

over the shoulder, when it will fall in the form of the true love’s

initial-letter. Then advancing to a mirror, without looking back, a face

will presently be therein reflected, looking over the shoulder, and it

needs good nerve to resist looking round. This too is a relic of that

form of divination with mirrors which was condemned as sorcery by the

popes of old. Hence we find hand-mirrors among the emblems sculptured on

the stones of Pagan Scotland. Next, each alone must go to the kail-yard

to pull up a cabbage-stalk, which symbolises the form and character of

the favoured lover. Thence passing on to the peat-stack, still alone,

and never looking back, each must walk round it thrice _sunwise_, and at

the end of the third turn some one will appear as in a vision. Another

means to the same desirable end is to go alone to a stream of running

water, and therein plunge the arm thrice, so deep as to wet the

sark-sleeve. Mystic words must be repeated while so doing, but no other

sound may be uttered, either in going or returning.

In Strathspey, a favourite game is the expedition to the kiln for drying

corn, which is attached to every farm of any consequence. Each lass must

steal away by turn from the kitchen fire, and going alone to the kiln,

must throw a ball of worsted into the empty furnace, and slowly wind it

up, saying certain words. It is supposed that _some one_ will take hold

of the end of the worsted, and appear to her in the form of her future

lover. She must not speak, either going or coming.

Formerly, every farm over the length and breadth of the land had its

Hallow-e’en bonfire, which was often surrounded by a circular trench,

symbolical of the sun.

These fires are in many districts nearly burnt out, but it is not many

years since Sheriff Barclay says he could count thirty fires blazing on

the hill-tops between Dunkeld and Aberfeldy, and could discern the weird

figures of the people dancing round them, while the faint echoes of

their choruses gave a still more unearthly feeling to the midnight. In

the neighbourhood of Crieff, also in Perthshire, the balefires, as the

people call them, still blaze as brightly as ever, as we have had full

opportunity of observing in the course of long twilight drives, when it

seemed as if every cottage we passed had its little bonfire for the

children; while later in the evening larger fires were lighted by their

elders, and kept up till midnight. We saw groups of dark figures dancing

round the fires; the principal refreshment consisting of milk, thickened

with oatmeal. Here, as in the northern counties, especially in Banff and

Aberdeenshire, all rejoicings are deferred till the 11th November; that

is Hallow-e’en old style. Sometimes, when the bonfire begins to burn

low, a circle of stones is placed round it; one to represent each person

present. Should any stone be moved before morning, it is a token of evil

to that person. He is said to be _fey_, and his death within the year is

considered probable.

The night of the 1st of November, Christianised as the Eve of All Souls,

was especially sacred to Samhan, who merely represented the sun in

another character. It was a night for special intercession by the living

for the souls of those who had died in the preceding year. For the

office of Samhan was to judge these souls, and either award them their

place of reward or of punishment. He was also called Bal Sab, or the

Lord of Death. In this character he seems to have been a kindlier master

than when at Beltane he claimed sacrifices of blood. At this harvest

festival he only needed offerings of the fruits of the earth; and his

name, Samhein or Samtheine, denotes peace-fire. It is probable that

Saint Samthena, whose day is still marked in the Romish calendar, was in

some way connected with this festival.

On the 25th December, when the shortest day was past, the great winter

festival called Yule was celebrated, to mark the turn of the year—the

sun’s new birth. It was a day of solemn worship and a night of feasting.

Fires blazed on every hill, which were rekindled on the twelfth night

subsequent to Yule. All manner of sacred plants were cut—more especially

the ivy and mistletoe. It has been suggested that in olden days a kiss

of peace was probably part of the ceremonial, and the origin of the

well-known kiss under the mistletoe, which in later years has led to its

prohibition in church decorations; though it is certain that till the

middle of last century it retained its place of honour as the chief

decoration on the altar of York Minster.

From the day answering to this 25th December, the ancient Hindus also

reckoned the beginning of their new year, distinguishing the day as “the

morning of the gods.” How the seasons of their year were made to

balance, is a standing mystery; for we know that, like the Druids of the

West, they reckoned by lunar years of 360 days.

On this night the Persians from time immemorial celebrated the birth of

their god, Mithra, the sun, whom they also worshipped under the name

Tseur, or Saviour, because of his saving them from the empire of

Ahriman, the power of darkness. (Hence, it is said, the name of the

ancient Druidic city of Tseur in Yorkshire, now called Aldborough.) The

Persian festival of the New Year is known as the Naurutz; the Shah and

all the court wait in solemn silence till the astrologers announce that

the sun has reached the equator, whereupon there follows a burst of

music, and the city is given up to rejoicing and mirth. Amongst other

games peculiar to this day, both among Persians and Arabs, is one known

as the game of the Beardless Rider, when men, hideously disguised and

painted, ride through the city on asses, playing all manner of whimsical

pranks, and going from door to door, followed by an admiring multitude,

to solicit small gifts. The custom answers precisely to that of

“guizarding,” still practised in various parts of Scotland, and known in

England as mumming and morris dancing.

Not alone in Persia was this day held in honour. In ancient Babylon it

was sacred to Rhea and Nin, the latter being the child of the sun, born

of a human mother. That mother was Semiramis the Great Queen, who,

doubtless well aware of the tradition that of the seed of a woman should

be born the promised Messiah, chose to assume the title of Spouse of the

Sun and Queen of Heaven; and taught the people to reverence her son

accordingly. Hence that worship of a mother and child which spread from

Chaldea to so many other lands, and which so amazed the Jesuit

missionaries, who first penetrated to India and China, and there, in

heathen temples, found images apparently representing the Madonna of

their own faith.

It is said that in Etruria, Gaul, and even Britain, a similar form of

worship was observed on this birthnight, and that the goddess of the

year was represented as nursing the infant god of day.

When the earlier teachers of Christianity found themselves unable to

abolish times and ceremonies so widely observed, and with so great a

hold on the faith of the people, it seems to have been judged expedient

to engraft the great Christian festival on that already established

without too rigid an attempt to alter external customs. There is no

doubt that this day first began to be observed as that of our LORD’S

nativity, about the middle of the fourth century, under the Roman Bishop

Liberius, and was not adopted by the Eastern Church till somewhat later.

St. Chrysostom, in preaching at Antioch A.D. 386, speaks of it as having

been first observed in that city about ten years previously. Had the

feast been of certain date, it would be very strange that the city in

which the disciples first received the name of Christians, should have

been so tardy in making it a day of annual rejoicing. St. Augustine also

admits that the observance of this feast, now so dear to every Christian

heart, was neither sanctioned by any great council nor derived from

apostolic usage. In fact it was never mentioned by any of the

ante-Nicene Fathers, even while enumerating the other festivals of the

Church.

It does seem strange, indeed, that the early Christians should have

retained no definite tradition of the exact date of the Nativity. Indeed

there is the greatest possible doubt when any feast commemorating it was

instituted. Some believe it to be traceable to the first century, but

the first certain information we have respecting it was its being

sanctioned as a Church Festival by Pope Telesphorus about A.D. 137. We

next hear of it in the persecutions under Diocletian, who burnt a church

full of Christians while they were celebrating this feast. But though

the observance of a birthday festival gradually spread, every branch of

the Christian Church selected whatever day seemed best in its own eyes,

and such was the diversity of opinion on this subject that we are told

that no less than 136 different days in the year have been fixed on for

Christmas-day by various Christian sects and learned men. They have been

summed up as follows: “The Egyptian Christians said the right season was

in January. Wagenseil thought February or August, but inclined to the

latter. Bochart was for March. Some, mentioned by Clemens Alexandrinus,

placed it in April, and others in May. Epiphanius mentions two sects,

one fixing it in June, the other in July. Lightfoot says September 15th.

Scaliger, Casaubon and Calvisius are for October. Several others put it

in November. The Latin Church decided on December 25th, which is the day

now universally recognised by Christendom. This was decreed by Pope

Julius I. A.D. 337, and he fixed it on the same day that the ancient

Romans celebrated the feast of their goddess Bruma, a festival much

observed by the heathen in the winter solstice.” It would, however,

appear as if December could lay even less claim to this honour than most

of the other months suggested, inasmuch as the rainy season in Judea

being then at its height, the shepherds would probably betake them to

their homes rather than watch all night in the open fields.

Nevertheless, in the absence of a certain date, the selection of one

particular day was a mere matter of expediency. Neander and others,

writing on this subject, observe that precisely at this season of the

year, a series of heathen festivals occurred so closely interwoven with

the whole civil and social life, that it was impossible to wean the

people from them. First came the Saturnalia, the maddest, merriest day

of the year. Then the custom of making presents (the Strenæ), followed

by the _festival of infants_, when the little ones received gifts of

images. Next the birthday of the New Sun. Therefore it was advisable to

draw the Christians away from sharing in the revelries of their Pagan

neighbours, by substituting some legitimate cause of rejoicing, and what

more natural than the birth of CHRIST, the Spiritual Sun appearing to

dispel the powers of darkness and to be Himself the Light of the world?

A feast so reasonable found ready acceptance, though it was long ere the

churches agreed on which day it should be celebrated; those of the east

still preferring to observe it on the 6th January, which had there

already been adopted as the Feast of the Epiphany. It was not till the

sixth century that anything like unanimity prevailed on the subject,

between the Eastern and Western Churches, and that all acknowledged the

wisdom of substituting a series of Christian feast-days, for those

heathen merry-makings which the converts were called on to abjure.

Nevertheless the universal feasting was still liable to abuse, and too

often degenerated into mere revelry and drunkenness; puppet shows and

miracle plays were devised to replace the idol worship of the temples,

and pagan superstition and excess still continued to reign under a new

and more sacred name. Yule having thus been deposed in favour of

Christmas, it followed as a matter of course that the Midsummer

Festival, just six months earlier, must represent the nativity of St.

John the Baptist. Thus two of the principal Pagan festivals were at once

utilized, and the bonfires, the exchange of gifts, the cutting of

evergreens, and the feasting were endowed with new meaning, and so

continue to this day; though the wild rejoicings of Yule have resolved

themselves into more sober Christmas mirth.

Do you remember Scott’s lines on this subject?

“Heap on more wood, the wind is chill,

But let it whistle as it will.

We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

Each age has deemed the new-born year

The fittest time for festal cheer.

E’en heathen yet, the savage Dane,

At Jol more deep the mead did drain;

High on the beach his galleys drew,

And feasted all his pirate crew.

Then in his low and pine-built hall,

Where shields and axes deck the wall,

They gorged upon the half-dressed cheer,

Caroused in seas of sable beer,

While round in brutal jest were thrown,

The half-gnawed rib, the marrow-bone.”

Our brewers can tell how well our Christmas ales keep up their demand,

though Thor no longer claims his libations. As to the crescent-shaped

cakes, which on this night were baked in honour of Astarte, queen of

heaven, they have long since been rounded at the ends, to give them

somewhat the form of a cradle.

The mistletoe of the Druids, and the Yule-log which once blazed in

honour of Odin and Thor, still hold their honoured place, and until very

recent times, the charred remains of the log of one year, were preserved

carefully until the following Yule, when they served to light the new

log; their presence in the house, being a safeguard against fire. A

monstrous candle called the Yule candle was also lighted, and was

expected to burn for twelve nights. Hence the Twelfth Night, so dear to

the little ones; a day of Pagan rejoicing, exactly corresponding with

the Feast of the Epiphany,—the manifestation of Christ as “the true

light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Whether this

heathen festival was in the first instance purposely utilized by the

Christian Church, does not appear, nor indeed whether it existed in

those eastern lands where the Epiphany was first observed. One of its

customs, however, as described by St. Chrysostom is curiously akin to

one practised among the worshippers of the sun. He says that in memory

of our Saviour’s baptism in water, the people did on this day carry home

water at midnight from the church, and lay it up, where it would remain

for several years as fresh and uncorrupt, as though it had just been

drawn from some clear fountain. One of the most ancient practices of the

priests of the sun in Ceylon, and still continued by their successors,

was on the morning of the New Year to draw water from the river, just as

the sun’s first ray lighted thereon, and in like manner to store it up

as a thing most precious, and incapable of pollution.

Of the Pagan observance of Twelfth Night in this country, the latest

trace lingered in Gloucestershire, where it was the common custom in the

last century, for all the servants of each farm to assemble in one of

the fields sown with wheat, and to make twelve small bonfires in a row,

the twelfth being larger than the rest in honour of the Twelfth Night.

Round this they gathered in a circle, and drank cider, returning home to

feast on cakes and ale. This method of preserving the crops from all

manner of evil, seems to have lingered in the parish of Pountley till

very recent days, and certainly affords a clear proof of the origin of

the festival.

There seems also no doubt that the Christmas-tree of Germany, now so

common among ourselves, was also a relic of old idolatry; of that

tree-worship common all over the world, which has ever reverenced

special trees as the chosen abode of some Divinity. It is said that the

custom of always using a fir-tree for this purpose, is traceable to very

remote days, when the Chaldeans worshipped their new-born god, under

this symbol, as _Baal-bereth_ or _berith_, _i.e._ lord of the fir-tree,

or lord of the covenant, a sort of priestly pun to conceal the higher

meaning from the populace.

On Yule morning, offerings of oatmeal and of various grains were made to

Hulda, the Divine Mother, to induce her to send abundant crops; and the

people feasted together. Hence the bowls of furmety or sowans, _alias_

sour gruel, which in our childhood we always shared in the early

Christmas morning. Hence too the custom of all the lads and lassies

going from farm to farm, each carrying their own bowl and spoon, to

share the brew of each gude-wife. Probably it was also in her honour

that those curious “Yule doughs” originated, still common in the north

of England, where many a time we have assisted at the manufacture and

baking of wonderful dolls, adorned with currants. Dolls masculine and

dolls feminine, to be duly distributed as sweethearts to every lad and

lass in the house—and many such have we received as offerings from the

cottage wives. Curiously enough, the same custom exists in New Granada,

where on New Year’s morning the native inhabitants assemble in their

temples, and the priests distribute to each worshipper a figure made of

flour of maize, which is to be eaten as a charm. The first month of

their year is called “The month of the ears of maize.”

Thus in our Christmas rejoicings we trace a strange combination of

Druidical rules, with German and Scandinavian customs, together with

those of the grim old Saxons. Nor has the Saturnalia of the Romans

failed to leave its mark. It is to such blending of divers creeds that

Dr. John Henry Newman refers when he tells us that Constantine, in order

to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred to it the

outward vestments to which they had been accustomed in their own

ceremonies. “The use of temples, and those dedicated to particular

saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense,

lamps and candles; holy water; asylums; holy days and seasons; the use

of calenders, processions, blessing on the fields; sacerdotal vestments;

the tonsure; the ring in marriage; turning to the east; images; ... _are

all of pagan origin_, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.”

The name of Yule is said to be derived from the Arabic “_Yul_,” the day

of (the Sun’s) revolution. The Norse _Yol_ and the Icelandic _Hoil_ bear

much the same meaning, and here we have the very name, Heul, under which

the Celts worshipped Helios the Sun-god; the Heli of the ancient

Sanscrit. The word Heul is still retained in Cornwall, while on the

opposite shores of Brittany it becomes Heol. In Frisian _Yule_ means a

wheel, as does also the Gothic _Giul_, and the word would naturally mark

the turning point of the year. Hence our English word _while_; Gothic

_hucila_, to express the wheeling, or revolution of time. It is said

that on the old Clog Almanacks, Yule tide is simply marked by a rude

wheel. This being the case, it is curious that the French word Noel

should be so generally referred to a Latin derivation (from _natalis_).

Is it not more probable that like the Irish Nolagh, the Gaelic Nollig,

the Cornish Nadelig, it may rather be traced to the old Chaldee

Sun-worship; to such a word as _Noulad_, to be born; or _Naugol_, to be

rolled along; and may, in some remote age, have been brought to our

shores by those same Phœnicians whose sun temples remain to this day?

Not only is this view corroborated by the common use of the word _Noel,

Noel!_ as a shout of greeting from the populace, when processions, or

great men, passed by, but it is also noteworthy that the term Noel and

its symbolic wheel, were not in olden time applied exclusively to the

winter festival, but were used with reference to divers other periods in

the revolution of the great Wheel of Light, or as it is called in the

Edda, the fair and shining Wheel.

Hence, so late as the year 1823 we find rolling a fire wheel (an obvious

relic of sun-worship), mentioned among the common sports of Midsummer’s

Eve, among the villagers of Konz on the Moselle, and at Trier; where it

was customary to take a great wheel wrapped in straw to the top of a

hill, where it was set on fire, and made to roll down, flaming all the

way; and if it reached the Moselle before the flames were extinct, it

betokened a good harvest, and filled the people with gladness.

Even among ourselves, a trace of this Wheel-emblem exists in one of the

common sports of Beltane, when smooth circular cakes, or bannocks, of

divers sizes, are carried up a grassy hill and thence rolled down. They

must be made very smooth and flat at the edge, like the tire of a wheel,

so as to run readily. The Badnock-Brae at Grantown is a gathering point

well known to all the young folk of Strathspey, who from their infancy

have assembled there on May morning to roll their bannocks, and their

hard-boiled eggs.

Among the New Year’s-eve customs in Hamburg and other parts of Germany

is one which savours of the old divination by fire. Like the Hindu

maidens at the Ganges, each person anxious to know his fate, or that of

his friend, places a tiny light in a walnut shell, which is set floating

in a flat dish full of water. Should the light go out within a certain

time, sore trouble will come within the year, probably death.

In Sweden, fire and light constitute the Jul decoration of the churches,

which are all illuminated; the pillars are wreathed with candles, the

galleries are adorned with double rows of them, the pulpit and the altar

alike glow with light, and in short the whole church is decked with

lighted candles just as ours are with evergreens. In the country

districts where old fashions most prevail, every window of every house,

however poor, displays a lighted candle in early dawn of Jul morning,

while long before daybreak the people pour into the churches for the

Jul-Otta or morning song, many of them sledging twenty miles and back in

the chilly night to be present at the service, and invariably bringing

their children, to secure various phases of good luck supposed to be

then bestowed on them. The farmers especially are careful to be present

at a festival, which secures a blessing on their harvest. Then all the

sledging parties dash home again, blowing horns as they go. Then follows

the mirth of the Jul-bord, the consumption of the Jul-cakes, the

distribution of Jul-gifts. Nor are the inferior creatures forgotten in

the rejoicings. All the farm animals receive a double portion of food,

and a sheaf of unthreshed corn is hung upon a high pole as a Jul feast

for the famishing birds. This yule sheaf is always laid up unthreshed at

harvest time, and any hard farmer who might grudge the birds their

offering would assuredly pay dear for his churlishness in the failure of

the next crop.

In Scotland and the northern counties of England the Midwinter

festivities are divided been Yule and New Year’s-eve, or Hogmanay as the

people call it; a name whose origin, like that of some of its customs,

seem lost in the mist of ages. Chambers suggests two derivations as

equally plausible, one the Scandinavian term Hogenat, the eve of Yule,

when various animals were slaughtered for sacrifice and for feast (hogg

meaning, to kill), or failing this, it might be traced to “Au qui menez”

(lead on to the mistletoe), of course referring to Druidical custom. Be

this as it may, the word is in the mouth of every child who comes to the

door, demanding the customary gift of oat-cake; as also of the mummers

or _guisers_ who go from house to house dressed up and singing. In many

cases they still take the old turn round the house to bring it luck.

There is a further division of the winter festivals, by the partial

adoption of New Style in reckoning. Thus just as one half of the people

keep Halloween on the last night of October, and the others observe the

11th of November, so with the New Year. This is especially remarkable on

the Inverness and Ross-shire coasts, which face one another, on either

side of the Beauly Firth. Long before sunrise on the first of January,

the Inverness hills are crowned with bonfires, and when they burn low,

the lads and lassies dance round them, and trample out the dying embers.

The opposite coast shows no such fires till the morning of the New Year,

Old Style, when it likewise awakens before daybreak to greet the rising

sun. One curious old custom is still observed in our good town of

Burghead (on the Moray Firth). It is called the burning of the Clavic.

Its meaning and its origin are alike unknown—but from time immemorial

the fisher folk and seamen, have, on this Yule night, reckoned according

to Old Style, assembled at the west side of the town, carrying an old

tar barrel and other combustible materials. This barrel being sawn in

two, the lower half is nailed into a long spoke of firewood, which acts

as a handle. _This nail must not be struck by a hammer_, but is driven

in with a stone. The half-barrel is next filled with dry wood, saturated

with tar, and built up like a pyramid, leaving only a hollow to receive

a burning peat, for no modern lucifer match may be applied, and a final

libation of tar completes the Clavic, which is shouldered by one of the

lads, quite regardless of the streams of boiling tar which of course

trickle all down his back; should he stumble or fall, the omen would be

held unlucky indeed, both to the town and to himself. When weary of his

burden, a second is ready to fill the honoured post, and then a third

and a fourth, till the Clavic has made the circuit of the town, when it

is carried to a hillock, called the Doorie, where a hollowed stone

receives the fir spoke. Fresh fuel is added, and in olden days, the

blaze continued all night, and at last was allowed to burn itself out

untouched. Now, after a short interval, the Clavic is thrown down the

western side of the hill, and a desperate scramble ensues for the

burning brands, the possession of which is accounted to bring good luck,

and the embers are carried home, and carefully preserved till the

following year, as a safeguard against all manner of evil. In bygone

times it was thought necessary that one man should carry it right round

the town, so the strongest was selected to bear this weighty honour.

Moreover it was customary to carry the Clavic round every ship in the

harbour, a part of the ceremony which has latterly been discontinued.

Last year, however, the Clavic was duly carried to one vessel, just

ready for sea. Handsful of grain were thrown upon her deck, and amid a

shower of fire-water, she received the suggestive name of the “Doorie.”

The modern part of the town is not included in the circuit, only the old

town is thus encompassed, if we may in all reverence borrow the

expression from the grand old Hebrew Prophets, by a protecting wall of

fire. Round this town of Burghead, are certain green hillocks known as

the Bailies. Doubtless they also bear witness to the balefires which

once crowned them.

The only other place where I can hear of any custom akin to this burning

of the Clavic, is at Logierait, in Perthshire, where certainly till late

years (probably even to this day) the young men assembled on

Hallow-e’en, and made great torches of faggots, by binding broom, flax,

and heather on a pole. This being kindled, is, or was, carried on the

shoulders of a strong lad, who runs round the village, followed by all

the crowd; and as fast as one faggot burns out, a second is kindled.

Sometimes several are lighted simultaneously. Pennant describes the same

ceremony as one of the regular institutions of Hallow-e’en a hundred

years ago, and says that when the faggot had been thus carried round the

village, its embers were used to kindle a great bonfire. This custom,

says Borlase, was forbidden by the Gallic Councils, and all concerned

were held to be as guilty as though they had actually sacrificed to

devils.

How strangely all these traces of old days bring to our very doors that

stubborn idolatry at which we so often marvel in reading the history of

the Israelites. Here, in our own land, we find our forefathers

constantly practising the same rites which were so solemnly prohibited

upwards of three thousand years ago; so that as we read the sacred

records of those old days, we almost seem to have stumbled on a history

of our heathen ancestors. There is just the same gradual departure from

a pure monotheism to the worship of many gods; so that the people who

once had worshipped one only Lord, began to burn incense in high places,

and on the hills, to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the planets, and

to all the host of heaven, which they loved. They worshipped Ashtaroth,

and set up graven images in her honour under every green tree. They

planted groves; they assembled beneath the oaks to burn incense to her

as the queen of heaven. The children gathered wood, the fathers kindled

a fire, and the women kneaded their dough to make cakes in her honour;

probably just such crescent-shaped cakes as the women of Britain were

wont to bake for her. Then they worshipped and poured out to her

drink-offerings, such as those libations of milk which in this land were

poured out on the _Gruapach_ stone of the villages.

The custom of passing children and cattle through the fire was one of

the rites which was longest in force in these isles. Even in the early

part of this century, it was, as we have already noticed, the constant

practice at these festivals, both in the Highlands and in Ireland, for

fathers to take their children in their arms and leap thrice through the

flames. The cattle were driven between two fires kindled near together.

It was also the custom to make criminals stand between two fires, to

expiate their sins, or else walk barefoot thrice over the burning ashes

of a carn-fire. Hence the Gaelic description of a man in dire extremity,

that he was “Edir da theine Bheil,” that is, between two fires of Baal.

The Highlanders still call the year Bheil-aine, the circle of Bel or the

Sun. It does not appear that they ever called their children after him,

as did some nations, where we find such names as Hannibal, the gift of

Baal (Dieu-donné), and Hasdrubal, one helped by Baal; or Belteshazzar,

Bel’s treasurer, the “new name” conferred on Daniel by his Babylonian

master. But the salutation of “Bal dhia dhuit,” or “Baal be with you,”

was retained, till the present century. And it seems probable that in

the English word _marvel_ and the French _merveille_ we still make use

of the Celtic description of a miracle, as being _Miov-Bheil_ or

_Meur-Bhe’il_, the finger of Bel.

Even the old Scotch saying, that a man will go to the Clachan, or

“stones,” meaning Church, is evidently derived from the days when the

temples of the land were simply circles of great stones; circles by the

way which are supposed to have been typical of eternity. Sometimes the

church was more clearly defined as Clachan Muire or Clachan Michael, the

stones of Mary or of Michael. It is also said that the old Saxon word

Kirk or Circ simply denotes such a circle. In fact the words Clachan and

Church seem to have been used promiscuously to describe either the old

pagan temple, or the Christian Church; for while the latter is

constantly called the Clachan, and the village is indiscriminately known

as the Clachan, or the Kirktown, we find various Druidic circles bearing

the more Christian title. One in Glamorganshire is called the Old

Church. One in Aberdeen is the Auld Kirk of Alford. Another is the Kirk

Hill of Logie Newton; while a fourth is the Auld Kirk of Tough.

One great Druidical cairn in the Isle of Bernera is called

Clach-na-greine or the Stone of the Sun. The very frequent recurrence of

this word _Grean_, in some form or other, is in itself a curious proof

of the wide-spread worship of the Sun in these isles. Colonel Robertson

has recently told us that in seven different counties of Scotland he

finds a stream called Greenburn, the stream of the Sun (answering to the

idea of the Suaj Khoond or Mirror of the Sun which we find so often in

India). He has also shown Greenock to mean Grian-chnoc, or the Knoll of

the Sun, _i.e._ the place where he was worshipped. In six counties he

finds Bal-green or Baile-greine, which was the town of the sun, and at

Ba-green in Perthshire a large artificial mound, with flat top, marks

the site of the holy ground. He also notes various mountains and lands,

in whose name the same word occurs; the latter sometimes further marked

by circles of Druidical stones as at Grenach or Grian-achaidh, the field

of the sun, in Perthshire.

Another familiar name is that of Grianan in the Isle of Arran; grand

serrated crags, whose bare crests catch the first gleam of the rising

sun, long before the dark shadows have rolled from off gloomy Loch

Ranza. On the opposite coast of Ayrshire we find Grianan Castle. One

great spur of Bein-na-Cailliach in Skye is called Bein-na-Grianan, and

Jura also, has its mountain of the sun, another Bein-na-Grianan, where

many a time we have watched the last rays linger, ere the great Day Star

seemed to sink beneath the waves. Perthshire also, has its Ben Grianan

above Glen Lyon; at its base there still remain the ruins of one of the

twelve great round towers, built by Fingal in this “winding valley of

the grey-headed stones.”

It is worthy of notice that, when the Romans invaded Britain, they

bestowed on Apollo, their Sun-god, this surname of Grianach, under which

they found him worshipped in these Isles: so he was known as Apollo

Grannus. That the worshippers of Apollo observed precisely the same

ceremonies as the Druids of the British Isles, has been recorded by many

old writers; more especially in describing the rites practised on the

Mount Soracte in Italy, where as soon as the flames of the great fires

ceased, one of the chief men present took in his hands the entrails of

some animal that had been sacrificed, and, walking thrice barefoot over

the still half-kindled embers, delivered them to the officiating priest.

This was the identical custom of the British Druids.

The fact is that there is scarcely a corner of the earth where the

worship of sun and fire do not seem to have found a place. Whatever

lesser gods were adored by any nation, the first place seems always to

have been accorded to the great Day Star.

We know how many cities were specially dedicated to the sun; as, for

instance, Rhodes, whose far-famed Colossus was supposed to be his image;

and it is now generally admitted that the Hercules of the Phœnicians was

simply an impersonation of Orchol, or Aurkl, the Sun. Perhaps his

history may have been originally borrowed from those ancient Hindu

legends that tell of the Heri-cules, the lords of the Solar race, who

claim descent from Heri, the Sun. Again he appears as the Phœbus,

Cephalus, and Endymion of the Greeks, and under divers other names of

Pagan gods, whose worshippers, when going forth to battle, caused their

priests to march at the head of their armies, bearing fire as his emblem

on little altars of silver—a symbol which to them was doubtless akin to

that guiding pillar of fire wherein the Israelites recognised the

presence of the Almighty going forth with their hosts.

Nor was this worship confined to what we are wont to term the old world.

In the sun temples of Mexico and Peru the ruthless Spaniards found their

richest spoils. On the site of one of these was erected the present

great Roman Catholic Cathedral in the town of Mexico, within which is

still preserved the Kellenda, a circular stone covered with

hieroglyphics, by which the Aztecs used to represent the months of the

year. In Peru, the Incas, as the monarchs were called, claimed to be

children of the Sun; and in their capital city stood a magnificent

temple dedicated to him. It was open at the east end, so that the rays

of the rising sun were reflected with dazzling light as they fell on a

great golden image at the western end representing his disk and rays.

Here a great annual festival was held at the summer solstice, when

multitudes gathered together from all parts of the empire, and, headed

by the Inca himself, awaited the moment when the first ray should touch

the golden image. Then all fell prostrate in devout adoration.

Sacrifices were offered akin to those of the Jews, after which the

worshippers shared a solemn feast of bread and wine.

Thus, truly, the tabernacle of the sun was set in all the ends of the

world; so that there was neither speech nor language where the host of

heaven failed to declare, not the glory of God, but their own majesty.

Even in the Christian Church there arose in the third century a schism

whereby the true Sun of Righteousness was confounded with the visible

sun, wherein He was said to have put off His incarnate body.[42] This

doctrine found the more ready acceptance from the fact that Pagan Rome

was at that time deeply stirred by a wide-spread revival of the old

faith; and the Christian converts lent a willing ear to the teaching

which seemed so well to blend the old and new creeds.

Fifteen hundred years have passed away since then, and still the fiery

god claims his place among the divinities of the earth. If we turn to

the wide plains of Hindustan, we there find that though many of the old

reverential customs of sun-worship are still retained in the complex

creed of the modern Brahmins, they are for the most part so blended with

the fables of an intricate mythology, that they are to educated minds as

purely symbolical as they are to the Parsees—a race who utterly

repudiate the name of fire worshippers, declaring that in their

reverence for sun and fire, they merely recognize the same symbol as

does the Christian in the lights which burn on the Christian altar.

But in some corners of the land the descendants of the aboriginal races

still retain the worship of their ancestors unchanged. There are small

colonies to the south-west of Calcutta[43] which bear the name of

Sauras, in honour of the sun, to whom, night and morning, they offer a

burnt sacrifice of clarified butter, and otherwise adhere to the ancient

ritual described in the Vedic hymns. They tend the undying fire in some

deep grove, where, beneath the waving palms, they may worship

undisturbed. Here they assemble also at every full moon and hold solemn

service. In India, as in England, the first day of the week bears the

name of Sunday.[44] There, however, it is treated rather as a fast than

a feast, for the strict worshippers of Vishnu abstain on this day from

all animal food. On this morning, throughout the time of harvest, each

household makes special offerings to the sun. They prepare trays of

earth, in which they sow rice seeds, and thereon pour out a libation of

water while invoking the sun. Some tribes exist, both in Orissa and in

the Himalayas, who will not break their morning fast till they have

obtained a clear view of their god, and who in cloudy weather sometimes

go all day without tasting food, rather than sin in this matter. In the

Garrow Hills in Bengal, there is another race of primitive Highlanders,

who profess the simplest nature worship; they adore the Sun, Moon, and

Elements; their temple is a dark mountain pass, where beneath the blue

canopy of Heaven, they assemble to offer solemn sacrifices with just

such ceremonies as we believe to have been formerly observed in these

Isles of Britain. But for traces of Sun-worship in its perfection, we

must look to such marvels of beauty as the ruined Sun temples in

Orissa—such as those at Kanarak, Jájpur, and Shergarh, where amid an

endless profusion of rich and intricate sculpture, the Sun-god still

drives his celestial car, drawn by the seven symbolic horses, carved in

imperishable granite. Other sculptures show the Sun, Moon and Planets.

These splendid temples have long since been forsaken save by a little

colony of faithful worshippers who still keep up the sacred fire in a

grove near Jájpur. But the mass of the people now follow the teaching of

the sagacious Brahmins, who have stretched their own faith, so as to

incorporate those of all their neighbours, and they now worship the Sun

under the form of Vishnu or Juggernaut. Yet within the great courts of

Juggernaut, one small temple is specially dedicated to the Sun, and

thither the people have transported their sacred black stone, from the

old temple at Kanarak. Not a shapeless unhewn stone, such as those

whereon the simple islanders of the Hebrides, used to pour out their

libations to the Sun, on Sunday morning—but a monolith 150 feet high,

carved into a stately and graceful pillar. Such pillars, we are told,

were common in Southern India even half a century ago, but they have for

the most part been destroyed by the ruthless ravages of Mohammedans and

others.

To return to the Scottish Sun-god, Grian. It seems that the Highlanders

consider the beneficent Brownies to be in some way his representatives,

though all their kindly work was done at night. The name by which they

were commonly called was Gruagach, the fair-headed. For, just as in the

Rig Veda, the Hindu Sun-god is described as the golden-haired, the

bright-haired, so the old Celts always spoke of the sun’s rays as his

yellow hair, and the Brownies were therefore supposed to have long

yellow hair. Hence this was a lucky colour, and the same Gaelic word

expresses both yellow and fortunate. Whether the same notion may account

for the sacred saffron robes of the Hindu Fakeers and of the Buddhist

priests of Siam and Ceylon; I will not venture to guess.

Each village in the Highlands had its rough unhewn stone, called the

Gruagach-stone, where, till very recent times, the villagers poured out

libations of milk on every day consecrated to Graine or Grian, just as

we now see the Hindus pour their daily offerings of milk, flowers, and

water, on a similar rough unhewn stone, wherein their god is supposed to

be present, and which invariably occupies a place of honour in every

village. I do not know whether any of these stones still remain in Skye,

but we are told, that not many years ago, there was scarcely a village

in the island where the Gruagach-stone was not still held in some sort

of reverence. Even in the last century libations of milk were poured on

these stones at dawn every Sunday as a preliminary to Christian worship!

Often, and I confess somewhat grudgingly, have I watched the poor Tamils

of Trincomalee thus offering their oblations of precious milk, which

they pour on the mighty headland of rock, where twice a week they

assemble at sunset, to make offerings of fire, which their priest,

standing on the utmost verge of the crag overhanging the sea, lifts

heavenward, while all the people throw their arms upward—a weird and

striking scene.

It would appear that the Romans likewise honoured their Sun-god with

milky offerings, one of the titles of Apollo being Galaxius, the milky

one, in whose honour was held a festival called Galaxia, when his

votaries feasted on pulse boiled in milk.

Pennant mentions divers places in Wales and Ireland which he describes

as Greinham, the house of the sun, where, he says, the Celts of old were

wont to worship. We also find an island on the Druidic coast of Brittany

which still bears the name of L’Ile de Groach. In Ireland there is to

this day a great number of ancient stone altars,[45] which are called

Graine’s beds. Of these there are said to be three hundred and sixty,

one for each day of the old Celtic year, and the people have a quaint

old legend, like one of Ossian’s songs, telling how Graine, the

fair-haired and beautiful wife of Fin-Mac-Cool, fled from her lord, with

young Dermot, and so incessantly did they fly from their pursuers that

they never rested twice on the same spot; a strangely poetic version of

a scientific fact, showing how early these old Celtic bards had noticed

and idealized the sun’s daily, restless course. Among the ancient Breton

legends we find divers versions of the loves of Graine and Diarmid, as

also in the songs of Ossian, where Diarmid is slain by a poisonous

bristle of the mysterious boar, which has pierced his heel. In the

county of Donegal, at Grianan of Ailach, there still remain various

traces of Cyclopean masonry, where, doubtless the temple of the Sun

formerly stood.

Those places in which the name of Graine occurs are by no means the sole

topographical traces of the early faith.

Many others thus betray their origin, as Dochann-le-bas in Perthshire,

which means “the agony pertaining to the flames,” having evident

reference to the old trials by fire. There are also a multitude of names

in which _teine_, or fire, occurs as Tulliebelton, from

Tulach-Beil-teine, “the knoll of the fire of Bel;” Ardentinny, from

Ard-an-teine, “the height of the fire;” and Craigentinny, from

Creag-an-teine, “the rock of the fire:” all doubtless having originally

been the places where the great Baal fires burned. As to the prefix Bel,

or Bal, which occurs in upwards of two thousand places in Scotland, and

which at first sight would suggest a similar connection, Colonel

Robertson declares it to be in every case derived from Baile, a village,

or dwelling; not even excepting such names as Balnacraig or Belcraig, or

even Balfron in Stirling, which is still marked by a Druidical circle,

at which, tradition says, all the people had assembled for worship,

leaving their little ones at their homes, where, alas! the wolves found

and devoured them. Hence the Clachan received the name Bail-fron, “the

town of mourning” (or the mourning by reason of Baal, as the case may

be). Belan, in Montgomeryshire, and the Baal hills in Yorkshire, are,

however, said undoubtedly to owe their names to the old faith.

Speaking of derivations, the name of the Hebrides is suggestive of one

of those curious amalgamations of Paganism and Christianity, which we

have so often had occasion to note. The name is literally Ey-Brides, the

Islands of Bridgit, to whom six parishes in Scotland are also dedicated.

Killbride, the cell of Bridgit, occurs eighteen times in Scotland alone,

and we also find Panbride, and our own Lhanbride in Morayshire. The

latter name tells its own story of the dubious saint; _Lhan_ being the

sacred grove of the Druids. Hence Lhanbride means simply the grove of

Bridgit, the Celtic goddess. Panbride is said to mean the light of

Bridgit, implying a place where light was vouchsafed.[46] Hence, it is

said, the church lands round Elgin Cathedral and the gate leading

thereto, derived their names The Pans, and Pans Port.

It seems, then, clear that the Hebrides (the Ebudæ of the ancients) were

under the special protection of that goddess Brighit, wife of Tath,

whose temple was attended by virgins of noble birth, called the

daughters of fire, or sometimes merely Breochuidh, the fire-keepers.

Like the ancient Persians, they fed this fire only with one kind of

peeled wood, and might never breathe upon the sacred flame. The ancient

Irish are said to have so greatly reverenced all fire that they would

not even put out a candle without uttering a prayer that the Lord would

renew to them light from heaven.

When Christianity began to make its difficult way in these isles, it was

so impossible to wean these vestal virgins from their post, that it was

found simpler to institute a Christian Order of Nuns of St. Bridgit. To

one of St. Patrick’s converts was assigned this delicate work of

adapting things old to new meanings. St. Bridgit accordingly took up her

abode in the grove of sacred oaks, where the people were accustomed to

worship the goddess, and here she instructed them in the new faith. The

vestal virgins were thus transformed into the first Christian community

of religious women, and the temple of Bridgit at Kildare, became a great

convent. To these Christian nuns was entrusted the care of the sacred

fire, which from time immemorial had been kept burning in honour of the

Celtic goddess. When, on the Eve of Good Friday, all other churches and

convents extinguished their fire, not relighting it till Easter Eve, the

nuns of St. Bridgit always kept theirs steadily burning, a practice

which Giraldus Cambrensis says he knows not whether to attribute to a

desire to have warmth and food always ready to bestow on all pilgrims

and poor people, or whether it was done in obedience to the Levitical

command that the fire should be ever burning on the altar, and never go

out.

Thus the fire of Bridgit was kept perpetually burning till the year

1220, when it was extinguished by order of the Archbishop of Dublin to

avoid superstition and scandal. So great, however, was the veneration in

which it was held by the people that it was speedily rekindled, and was

kept burning steadily on, till the monastery was suppressed in the time

of Henry VIII. The ruins of the Fire House are still to be seen.

A somewhat similar incorporation of things old and new, was the Romanist

procession of lighted candles on the 2nd February, “in memorie of

Christe ye spirituall Lyghte.” It seems that on this day the ancient

Romans burnt candles to the goddess Februe; and Pope Sergius, seeing it

was useless to prohibit the practice, ordained offerings of candles to

the Holy Virgin. Hence the feast of Candlemas.

Thus you see, Christianity was made easy by a very simple process of

assimilation. Sometimes, indeed, it was found necessary to make a

decided stand, as when the Christianized Goths craved permission to

retain many wives, and to eat horse-flesh. The former point was

conceded; but on the latter question the Church remained firm. Certainly

it was a better decision than that which sanctioned St. Vladimir, the

first Christian prince of Russia, in putting away all his wives,

preparatory to his Baptism and marriage with the sister of the Emperor

of Constantinople, inasmuch as putting them away meant simply depositing

them in the Volga together with Perune, his deposed idol. So the process

of assimilation certainly had some advantages!

This rigid prohibition of horse-flesh must have had reference to the

sacrificing of horses to the Sun; a custom common to all the Aryan

nations. The Scythians did so we know, so did the Armenians and

Persians, whose costly horse sacrifices, and milk-white chariot of the

Sun, have been described by Xenophon. Those of the Hindus are recorded

in the Rig Veda, wherein we are told how at the great festival of the

Aswamedha, a horse with rich trappings was led thrice (sunwise of

course) round the sacrificial fire—then, while the king confessed his

sins, and offered gifts to the Sun, the horse was sacrificed by the

priests, and its flesh was made into little balls, and eaten by the

worshippers. On some of the ancient Hindu Temples, such as the marble

ruins on Mount Aboo, we find sculptures representing the car of the Sun

drawn by seven horses, a custom probably still retained in Rajpootana

and other native States. The Sun, however, is now honoured with an extra

steed, as recent residents in Jeypore describe how on the festival of

his birth, his chariot is brought from his temple and drawn through the

city by eight horses. Other steeds are solemnly dedicated to him by the

people, who pray that in return for such sacrifice, their cattle, and

their children may multiply.

Precisely similar was the custom of the Welsh, who long continued to

offer horses at the Holy Well at Ceqidoc, in order to bring a blessing

on their herds; and there seems no doubt that the horse-flesh eaten by

our ancestors had been previously sacrificed to the Celtic Sun-god Heul,

under which name they worshipped that Helios, to whom the Greeks offered

white horses. The horse occurs on the old coins both of Gaul and

Britain; in connection with other emblems of the Sun and sometimes even

with the head of Apollo.

Thus, too, the Egyptians of old were wont to represent Ra, their

Sun-god, in a car drawn by seven horses, bearing with him seven

prisoners, to represent the seven days of the week. Doubtless it was

this Egyptian practice that suggested to the Kings of Judah the offering

of chariots and horses to the Sun.

Several curious relics of heathen days, connected with the baptism of

children, were kept up in the Highlands certainly till the beginning of

this century. The fire-place of a Highland cottage being in those days

almost invariably just a hollow in the middle of the floor, such as you

may see in some parts of Argyle and the Isles, the child was handed

across the fire, immediately after its baptism, being thus as it were,

made to pass through the flames. This was done thrice. Then each person

present took three spoonfuls of meal and water, or something stronger.

Sometimes the child was placed in a basket covered with a white cloth,

and bread and cheese being laid beside it, the basket was suspended from

the crook in the fire-place, which was moved round thrice sunwise.

Moreover every person entering the house was required to take up a

burning firebrand from the hearth, and therewith cross himself, before

he ventured to approach the new-born child or its mother.

These customs seem to have formed part of the ceremony to which Pope

Gregory alluded, when speaking of pagan baptism, a ceremony in which

both fire and water were employed by the Druids, in honour of Neith,

their goddess of waters, whose name is said to signify purifying with

water. Perhaps when these men first beheld the symbolic use of these

sacred elements in Christian baptism, they may the more readily for old

sake’s sake have submitted to that mystic rite. As regards the presence

of fire in the Christian Sacrament, we must bear in mind that although

the majority of Protestants disallow it, it is still retained by very

large sections of the Church, as representing the fire of Divine love.

Thus the Romish Church, in blessing the water to be used in baptism,

dips a lighted taper in the font, in token that the baptism from on high

is not with water only “but with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” and the

Greek Church symbolizes the same mystery by the great lighted tapers,

which are ranged round her font.

Whatever may have been the original idea in worshipping Neith, as a

goddess of purifying water, it seems to have quickly degenerated into

the commonest invention of mythology. This River-goddess had the power

of assuming the form of a horse or of a bull, and invariably proved

treacherous and malicious. Hence she was dreaded as a destroyer, who

lured men to their doom. She appears in endless stories of Water Bulls

and Water Kelpies, and is supposed still to haunt Loch Lomond, Loch

Rannoch, Loch Awe, Lochan Dorb in Morayshire, and many of the distant

isles. Sometimes she takes human form, and sucks the blood of man or

maid. Sometimes she appears as a stray horse, quietly grazing by the

water; then should any rash rider mount her, or any canny farmer harness

her, with others, to the plough, she will dash into the water and there

at her leisure, devour her victims. Sometimes an irreverent hand has

tried to kill the suspected stray horse, but at touch of cold steel, she

is transformed into a quiet pool of water.

Various places both on the mainland and in the Hebrides still bear her

name of Neith or Nait; Annat burn, and Annat glen in Perthshire; the

Tempul-na-Anait in Skye, and the Tabir-na-Annait, or Well of Neith, in

the little island of Calligray belonging to Harris, where the

worshippers purified themselves before proceeding to the

Teampull-na-Annait, close by—the ruins of the old Christian Chapel,

retaining the name of the heathen goddess. Colonel Forbes-Leslie has

pointed out the singular identity of this name with that of the Persian

goddess Anaitis, whose temple was reared on an artificial mound. Strabo

describes having himself witnessed the ceremonial of the Magi in her

honour; and, as we know that they offered horses to the rivers, the

origin of the water kelpies seems plain enough. Wilford writing in the

last century describes certain springs of naphtha near the Tigris, which

were sacred to the goddess Anaïas, and he mentions that many holy Hindus

made pilgrimages to her temple. Pennant also speaks of Anait as a

goddess of Armenia, and mentions that Diana was sometimes called the

Anait. He says that in the Isle of Skye he found traces of four temples

of Anait; one of these was near Dunvegan. In each case they were built

at the spot where two rivers met, a stone wall extending from stream to

stream, so as to form with the two waters a triangle, in the centre of

which stood the ruins of the temple.

Doubtless the worship of the goddess Neith was the origin of the

reverence paid to all wells and fountains, and of the custom of leaving

offerings of more or less value, to propitiate the spirit of the well.

Both Edgar and Canute issued prohibitory statutes touching this matter;

and Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, shows that woods,

waters, birds, and beasts, were still commonly worshipped. Pope Gregory

III. in 740, prohibited the Germans from offering sacrifices and

consulting auguries beside the fountains in sacred groves. And so late

as A.D. 1102, St. Anselm issued commands in London, forbidding

well-worship. In Ireland the difficulty was solved by dedicating the

wells to saints, whose votaries still deposit a rag or a pin, to

represent the more precious offerings of olden days. But it is strange

indeed to find the very same custom still lingering in this land of

sturdy common sense, and to find that divers wells and lochs are still

supposed to have miraculous powers of healing. For instance there is a

loch in Strath Naver in Sutherland, to which people constantly resort

for all manner of cures. They must walk backwards into the water, take

their dip, and leave a small coin as an offering. Then without looking

round they must walk straight back to the land, and so, right away from

the loch.

On the island of Inch-Maree, in Loch Maree in Ross-shire, there is a

well where the people still hang “clouts,” and leave small coins, and

which till very recently, had the property of curing madness, at such

times as the waters were full. Should they be low, it was a sign that

the spirit of the well was unpropitious, and the waters had no such

power. Close by the well, and surrounded by a low copse of oak and birch

wood, there is a very old burial-place surrounded by a circular wall,

which Pennant believed to have been originally a Druid temple. The stump

of a very old tree was pointed out to him, as the place of the altar,

and here lunatics were made to kneel, and make their offerings; thence

passing to the well, they drank its sacred waters, and made a second

offering, after which they bathed, thrice in the lake. This ceremony was

repeated daily for several weeks, by which time, the feverish madness

was often pretty well cured; and so firmly did the people believe in the

power of St. Maree (Malruba), that his name was the most solemn oath by

which they swore. All went well, till one evil day, when alas! a mad dog

was thrown into the well. The dog was cured, but the angry spirit of the

well departed for ever. The man whose presumption wrought this mischief

himself went mad; but he tested the waters in vain; their virtue had

gone from them, never to return, nor have they ever again risen to their

former level. Whether this miracle had any connection with certain deep

drainage cuttings made at that time, I leave sceptics to determine.

In like manner in a churchyard on Loch Torridon is a well where for

centuries three stones have been perpetually whirling round and round.

All manner of illnesses have been cured by carrying one of these stones

in a bucket of water to the patient, who touched the stone, after which

it was carried back to its usual place, and began whirling as usual. But

one day, a foolish woman carried home one of them in her bucket to heal

a sick goat, and when it was put back, it would no longer whirl, but

sank to the bottom of the well, where it has lain quietly ever since.

All these well-stories seem to prove the spirits terribly prone to take

offence. One of the springs held in especial reverence was the Tonbir

Knabir in Islay, literally the locomotive well, so called because it was

originally in Isle Colonsay; but one day a rash woman was guilty of

washing her hands in it, whereupon it instantly dried up, and

transported its waters to Islay, where it was henceforth honoured with

_Deisul_ processions, and small offerings were made to its tutelary

spirit. St. Catherine’s well and chapel in the Isle of Eigg were also

treated with much reverence. So was that at Sleat in the Isle of Skye.

At Broadford there is a well in the churchyard, near to which used to

hang a bell, that rang supernaturally about once a week. No human

bell-ringer had any hand in producing the wild chimes that rang out so

loud and clear that they could be heard for miles, giving warning to all

the sick folk to come to the healing waters and be made whole. But a new

power at last interfered (minister or steward) and the bell was removed,

since which time the virtue of the well is gone, and the people are left

to the tender mercies of a human leech. One loch in Ross-shire is still

said to cure deafness, and the neighbours told me of one man who had

undoubtedly recovered his hearing by judicious adherence to the letter

of the law; thrice he had walked backwards into the water and thrice

returned to land without looking round. Their admiration of the cure was

somewhat damped by the fact of the man’s death within a year. The well

at Craig-Howe in Ross-shire also cures deafness, and receives large

stores of clouts, pins, and coins.

In the parish of Avock, in the Black Isles (facing Inverness), is a well

called Craigie Well, probably from the dark crag rising behind it. On

the first Sunday in May (old style) all the people from far and near

gather here at daybreak—a regular hearty Highland gathering—as merry as

a fair, all exchanging kindly greetings and good wishes for the health

of the coming year, in good broad Scotch, in Gaelic, or in such pure

English as we rarely hear from the poor in any part of Britain, save

here, where it is an acquired tongue. The health, of course, is to be

secured by a draught of the lucky well. But they must get their drink

before the sun rises. Once he climbs the horizon the spell is broken, so

as the last moments draw near the eager pressing forward for a taste

amounts to a downright scramble.

A stranger, whose curiosity induced him to go forth betimes and witness

this curious scene, tells how “some drank out of dishes, some stooped on

their knees to drink, the latter being occasionally plunged over head

and ears by their companions.” As the first rays of the sun appeared a

man was seen coming down the brae in great haste. He was recognised as

“Jock Forsyth,” a very honest and pious, but eccentric individual.

Scores of voices shouted, “You are too late, Jock. The sun is rising.

Surely you have slept in this morning.” The new-comer, a middle-aged

man, perspiring profusely, and out of breath, nevertheless pressed

through the crowd and never stopped till he reached the well. Then,

muttering a few inaudible words, he stooped on his knees and took a

large draught. Then he rose and said, “O Lord, Thou knowest that weel

would it be for me this day, an’ I had stoopit my knees and my heart

before Thee in spirit and in truth, as often as I have stoopit them

afore this well. But we maun keep the customs of our fathers.” So he

stepped aside among the rest and dedicated his offering to the briar

bush, which by this time could hardly be seen through the number of

shreds which covered it. For part of the ceremony is that each comer

must hang a shred of cloth on a large briar bush, which grows close by

the well, as an offering to the healing and luck-conferring waters,

forcibly reminding the beholder of those holy wells and bushes in the

Emerald Isle, where many-coloured rags flutter in the breeze; poor

Paddy’s votive offerings to the blessed St. Somebody on behalf of sick

parent or child. Reminding us also of the tombs of the Mohammedan

saints, near Constantinople, where every pilgrim ties to the window bars

a shred torn from his or her own raiment. The same custom is religiously

observed by the Mohammedan pilgrims visiting the Mosque of Omar at

Jerusalem; beneath the great dome of which lies that huge rock whence

Mohammed ascended to heaven, supposed to be the identical rock whereon

Abraham did not sacrifice Isaac. This rock is surrounded by a great iron

railing, adorned with thousands of rags, tied up by the pilgrims as

reminders to the Prophet. Indeed, strips of old cloth seem to be a

recognised medium of communication with the spirit-world in all corners

of the globe, for in our eastern wanderings we found many a gaily

decorated shrub in the lonely Himalayan glens and passes, which, in the

distance, seemed to be loaded with blossoms, but which on closer

approach proved to be laden with bright morsels of rag, the simple

offerings of the Hill-men to the spirit of some tree or well. In Ceylon

also, where we spent a lovely moonlight night on the summit of Adam’s

Peak, the “Holy Mount” of Buddhists, Sivaites, and Mohammedans, we noted

the multitude of rags tied to the iron chains which prevent the roof of

the temple covering the holy footprint from being blown away. The poor

pilgrims believe that a shred of their raiment, thus offered, will

surely prevent Buddha from forgetting them and their vows. On these

superstitious customs in far-away lands we look with calm indifference.

But to find the very same practice still lingering among our sturdy

Ross-shire Highlanders is certainly somewhat startling.

Similar customs are still kept up at St Mary’s Well, in the birch wood

above the house of Culloden, two miles from Inverness, where on this

same morning (first Sunday in May, old style), several hundred people

assemble from far and near, to wish for their heart’s desire, drink

solemnly, and hang up a rag on the bushes before sunrise as being a most

efficacious hour, though they continue coming as long as the dew lies on

the grass, which it often does all day. Formerly a chapel stood close

by, but its ruins have now disappeared.

There were certain wells from which water was carried to the sick. It

was necessary that it should be drawn before sunrise, that the bearer

should not speak on his way to or from the well, neither open his lips

till the sick man had drank the life-giving potion. Nor might the

water-vessel be allowed to touch the ground. There were also peculiar

virtues belonging to water drawn from under a bridge “over which the

living walked and the dead were carried.” Especial virtue was attached

to south-running water.

One condition of success in all these charms was that there should be no

looking backward, and the same idea is clearly traceable in various

Hindu customs. Thus in Bengal, a man intending to travel will first

consult an astrologer, and having ascertained the lucky moment to start,

he takes a green leaf from out a brass lota (vessel) filled with water

from the sacred Ganges, and then walks straight out of his house and

right away, without once looking back.

All lads and lasses who, on Hallow-e’en, peer into the looking-glass for

visions of the future, know well that they must not dare to glance

backward lest they should see more than they ought. One curious legend

of our own dear old home tells how Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstown, who

was well known to have dealings with the powers of darkness, chose one

morning to drive his coach and four across Loch Spynie after a single

night’s frost. He bade his servant to sit steady, and on no account look

back. The man obeyed till just as they reached the further side, he

could not resist “a glower ower his left shoulder,” and as he turned he

beheld a large black raven fly from the back of the carriage, which at

the same instant sank into the mud, so near the edge, however, that the

good steeds managed to extricate it without further aid from the

spirit-world.

So strongly is this point insisted on in all dealings with the wizards

of all lands, that I almost fancy some such notion may have crept in

among the old Jews (who were constantly tainted by the superstitions of

their heathen neighbours), and may have been the cause why, when the ten

lepers were cleansed, the nine went straight away, and the stranger

alone returned to give thanks for his cure. They were always

sufficiently ready to attribute the miracles of our Lord to witchcraft

and the agency of Beelzebub, prince of the devils, and may have done so

in this case also.

These sacred wells seem to have been reverenced all over the country,

and every now and then the records of the kirk sessions tell of some

luckless wight having been subjected to discipline for heathenish

practices as an example to all other offenders, without, however,

producing the desired effect. Among the various efforts made to check

the well-worship in the seventeenth century was an order from the Privy

Council, appointing Commissioners “to wait at Christ’s well in Menteith

on the first of May, and to seize all who might assemble at the spring,

and imprison them in Doune Castle.”

Great efforts were then made to extinguish heathenism of all sorts,

necromancies, and spells with trees and with stones, as also to put down

the custom of bringing men sick of divers diseases to be touched by “the

seventh son of a woman; never a girl or wench being born between.” But

at the same time, the law still sanctions all cases of scrofula being

brought to the King, as “daily experience doth witness that Kings and

Queens do possess this speciall gift of God, to heall with only

touching.” Therefore, not only did the kirk authorise the continuance of

this practice, but the Church of England sanctioned a special liturgy to

be used on these occasions. This custom was first introduced by Edward

the Confessor in 1058, and was continued by his successors. So we hear

that Charles I. did on St. John’s Day 1633 visit Holyrood Chapel, and

there “heallit 100 persons, young and old, of the Cruelles, or King’s

Evil.”

In the days of his captivity, when a rude soldiery would not suffer the

poor cripples to come near the royal person, the King prayed aloud that

God would grant their petition, and that prayer, says the historian, was

granted, although the touch was thus prevented. Charles II. actually

touched ninety-two thousand one hundred and seven such patients, being

an average of twelve per diem for twenty years. Verily he had “a

doctor’s trouble, but without the fees!”

In fact, he paid the fees, as he restored the custom of giving to each

sick person a broad gold piece, instead of the “beggarly silver coin”

which his predecessors had substituted for the original “fair

rose-noble.” According to Wiseman, the King’s Physician, scarcely one

instance occurred in which the Royal touch failed to accomplish a cure.

Indeed, not he alone, but a host of learned divines and surgeons wrote

treatises on the subject, declaring their perfect faith in this

miraculous power. Even in the days of good Queen Bess, an eminent

surgeon, in a professional work on the treatment of this disease,

declares his confident belief that when all the other methods of cure

have failed, people may expect sure relief from the touch of Her

Majesty.

Nevertheless, when vain men and women dared to practise soothing

mesmeric passes and “stroking,” the cures which they sometimes performed

were invariably attributed to witchcraft, just as magic was suspected,

when the Egyptian priests of old proved that “by touching with the

hands,” or “stroking with gentle hands,” they could immediately restore

to health those to whom medicines had proved of no avail; a miraculous

power which descended to one, at least, of the Egyptian saints of the

desert, of whom it is recorded that he found that by his touch he could

heal all manner of diseases.

In early days these royal physicians signed their patients with the

cross; but this was discontinued when the wrath of Rome was fulminated

against Protestant kings, to whom, nevertheless, Catholics, as well as

patients of other creeds, continued to come for relief. In fact, as if

to prove how powerless was the anathema of the Pope to check this gift

of Heaven, we find Henry VIII. not content with miraculously curing all

scrofula-stricken patients who came to him, but also such as were

afflicted with cruel cramps. The former he cured by the usual royal

process of stroking; while on the latter he bestowed magical rings,

known as cramp rings. So strictly orthodox, however, were these

miracles, that Church and State alike clung jealously to them, as to a

most precious item of regal prerogative, and so late as 1684 (while

presumptuous subjects who dared to work similar cures, were condemned as

wizards and witches), we are told how one Thomas Russell was tried for

high treason, because he had spoken with contempt of the King’s touch.

The practice of bestowing on every patient a gold coin, suspended from

the neck by a white ribbon, was first introduced by Henry VII. in the

gladness of finding that he indeed possessed the regal gift of healing,

just as truly as that poor Richard whose Divine right to the throne he

failed to acknowledge. Charles II., as we have seen, dealt out his

ninety-two thousand cures and golden coins with liberal hand, but in

later days a trifling silver coin was substituted. Such an one was

bestowed, by Queen Anne on the infant Dr. Samuel Johnson, and is still

preserved as a relic by the Duke of Devonshire. It is strange indeed, to

think of the great embodiment of heavy learning having been subjected to

this quaint remedy for his infantile pains. He speaks of his earliest

recollections of Queen Anne, as a lady dressed in a black hood, and

glittering with diamonds, into whose awful presence he had been ushered

in his infancy, that by her royal touch she might cure him of his sore

disease!

The office appointed by the Church to be said on these occasions was

actually retained in the English liturgy till 1719, when it was quietly

omitted by command of George I., who altogether discouraged the

superstition. Yet the practice was only finally relinquished by George

III. As to the Jacobite party, they retained their faith in the Stuart

touch to the very last. Thus when Charles Edward was at Avignon, certain

sufferers were taken to him there; others were brought to him at

Holyrood.

The same strange power has always been claimed by the Kings of France,

as part of their Divine right. So early as A.D. 481 it was practised by

Clovis. And we are told that on Easter Day 1686 Lewis XIV. touched

sixteen hundred people, saying to each, “_Le roy te touche, Dieu te

guérisse!_”

When royalty refused any longer to practise this healing art, a

substitute was found, noways flattering to the royal touch. It was

discovered that rubbing the body of a patient with the dead hand of a

criminal who had been executed, was a certain and instant cure for the

King’s Evil. Such a hand had other good qualities as well, and even in

the beginning of the present century, it would sell for a considerable

sum, the executioner at Newgate deriving large monies from this little

perquisite.

As concerns the royal touch, it was small marvel that while such

superstitions were encouraged in high places, the law could do little to

check the practices of the people, so that little effect was produced

till after 1745, when, with the fall of the Jacobites, everything that

was supposed to savour of Popery, was doubly discountenanced.

Nevertheless, as we have seen, the old superstition still lingers in

certain districts. At Glass, in Banffshire, the Wallack Well and the

Corsmall Well still receive pins, buttons, rags, and coins from sick

folk, who hope thereby to be cured of their diseases. So does St.

Mungo’s Well in Huntly, where the people assemble on the first of May,

and carry away bottles of its water as a charm against the fairies, who

are supposed to hold their revels at the Elfin Croft hard by. I thought

of this custom while watching the pilgrims near the source of the Ganges

sealing up bottles of the precious water, which they carry with them to

their far-distant homes, therewith to anoint their most cherished idols.

Another favourite well has always been that of St. Cecilia, near

Netherdale in Aberdeenshire: some strong enforcements of the law of

trespass have, however, recently checked the meetings here. The same law

did its best to check the gatherings at the old well at Hopeman, near

Burghead; but the sturdy fishers there do not understand such

interference with their old customs, so they are now left

undisturbed.... St. Fergon’s Well, near Inverlochy, is another which is

said to possess divers virtues, and continues to be a favourite place of

resort—the general offering to its spirit being a crooked pin, or, on

rare occasions, “a bawbee.”

The well at Metherclunie, near Dufftown, is a great gathering-point on

May morning, when the usual offerings of pins, &c., are made. The well

of Montblairie, also in Banffshire, is equally sacred; so is St.

Colman’s Well, in the parish of Kiltearn, in Ross-shire. But perhaps the

most popular of all is the Greuze Well, near Dunkeld, which is still

frequented by people from all parts of the country, who bring their sick

children, that having tasted the mystic waters they may be healed. The

offerings here are of a very superior sort, as silver coin is

occasionally thrown in instead of the more frequent pins and pence; and

rags and scraps of the sick folks’ clothes are left hanging on the

heathery tufts, as a reminder to the spirit of the Greuze.

St. Mary’s Well at Orton, on Speyside, still continues to attract crowds

on certain days, chiefly of young folk, who here hold their tryst—lads

and lasses who count on a day’s sweethearting and merrymaking; but for

more serious purposes, such as quest of health, it seems to have

somewhat lost favour lately, though it is not long since we noticed a

girl hiding the cap of a sick baby under a stone, as though shrinking

from observation. In Badenoch, however, there is no such shame. There

are wells for heart ache and wells for toothache, and one well that is

bottomless, for when careless hands drop their pails therein they can

never be recovered. At Culbokie, in Ross-shire, there is another lucky

well, which, like all these others, is duly honoured by contributions of

votive offerings, chiefly in the form of “clouts.” St. Fillan’s Well, in

Perthshire, has been held sacred from time immemorial, though the name

it bears dates only from the days of that sainted abbot of

Strath-Fillan, to whose pious intervention Bruce was said to owe the

victory of Bannockburn. The King’s chaplain had been commanded (so says

Boethius) to bring to the field of battle the sacred arm of the saint;

but the wily priest, fearing the loss of the relic, brought only its

silver shrine. Yet when the King invoked the holy saint, the shrine

opened of its own accord, revealing the precious limb laid safely

therein; and the soldiers beholding this token of the favour of heaven

fought as those already assured of victory. St. Fillan’s Well was long

believed to cure insanity, and the luckless sufferers received very

rough handling to effect this, being thrown from a high rock down into

the well, and then locked up for the night in the ruined chapel. On “the

witch-elm that shades St. Fillan’s spring” were hung the gay rags and

scraps of ribbon wherein the saint was supposed to find delight. An

average of two hundred patients were annually brought to this well.

Precisely similar was the belief of the Welsh in the waters of Llandegla

for the cure of the same mysterious affliction. They, in like manner,

cast the unhappy patient into the well, and then left him bound for the

night in the church, beneath the communion table. An offering of poultry

was deemed essential; so if the patient were a woman, a hen was

imprisoned with her; in the case of a man, the victim was a cock, into

whom doubtless the demon of insanity passed.

A very important feature in the ceremonial at St. Fillan’s, Struthill,

and other wells where lunatics were cured is, that after their bath in

the holy fountain and their sunwise procession, they were tied to a

pillar, supposed to be far more ancient than the Christian church

wherein it stood. Colonel Forbes-Leslie mentions just such a pillar in

the ruined city of Anarajapoora, in Ceylon. It is said to be possessed

of precisely similar virtues, and though the natives call it an old

Buddhist monument, it is probably a relic of a much earlier

superstition.

He also alludes to the legend which tells how Gautama Buddha first

realized his having attained perfection by finding that a dish which he

placed on the water would float miraculously against the current of the

stream. This is much the same notion as we find connected with various

holy wells; such as the Well of Shadar, in Isle Bernera, whereon a

wooden bowl was set floating as a means of discovering whether a sick

person would or would not rally. Should the dish turn sunwise all would

be well.

St. Andrew’s Well, in the Isle of Lewis, was also consulted as an oracle

when any one was dangerously ill. A wooden tub full of this water was

brought to the sick man’s room, and a small dish was set floating on the

surface of the water; if it turned sunwise it was supposed that the

patient would recover, otherwise he was doomed.

One such far-famed fountain lies at the foot of the great rock-mountain

of Quiraing, in the Isle of Skye, where, sheltered by the greenest of

grassy hills, are the clear crystalline springs of Loch Shiant, whose

bright waters gleam over a bed of pure sand, and are still considered a

specific for all manner of diseases. Pilgrimages are still sometimes

made here, and the usual turn sunwise must be made thrice before

drinking, after which some small offering is laid down for the guardian

spirit of the well. Formerly, though the rivulet and the loch were alike

full of fish, no one would presume to touch them; they were, in fact,

esteemed as sacred as those holy fishes which fatten in the tanks of

Himalayan temples, and which rise mockingly to stare at hungry

travellers. Close by the Loch there still remains some low brushwood,

marking where formerly a copse of larger bushes flourished, which, even

a hundred years ago, were held in such reverence that no one might

venture to break a twig from their branches. This probably was the

latest trace of the tree-worship once commonly practised in these isles.

It is somewhat singular that this phase of idolatry should have died out

so wholly in all Christianized countries, while water, fire, and stones

retained so strong a hold on the reverence of the people. Vainly did the

Council at Arles, in A.D. 452, decree that “if in any diocese any

infidel either lighted torches or worshipped trees, fountains, or

stones, he should be found guilty of sacrilege.” Vainly did divers other

Councils again and again repeat the same warning, especially forbidding

the lighting of torches and offering candles and other gifts to these

three sacred powers. Vainly, too, did King Edgar and Canute the Great

forbid the barbarous adoration of the sun and moon, fire and fountains,

stones, and all kinds of trees and wood; still the people clung with

tenacity to all their varied forms of paganism except the worship of

trees, which seems gradually to have been forgotten, or only remembered

in Germany, whence we have borrowed the Yule custom of illuminating a

fir-tree with offerings of candles. The people of Vienna still preserve

one curious relic of this worship in the heart of their great city,

namely the _Stock am Eisen_, the battered trunk of an old tree, into

which every apprentice must drive a nail for luck ere starting to seek

his fortune in life. This old tree is the last relic of that sacred

grove beneath the shade of which the people were wont to worship, and

round which the Christian city has grown up.

Another holy well of some note is that at Tullie Beltane, near to which

are two Druidic circles. Here the people met (at all events till lately)

and having drunk of the water they solemnly walked nine times sunwise

round the lesser temple and nine times round the well. But it is not

only in Scotland that these traces of the old well-worship are to be

found. Shropshire has divers sacred wells, which are reputed to cure

lameness. In Yorkshire many wells are decked with flowers on Ascension

morn in lieu of the old spring festival; while in Derbyshire the

original day claims the same honour, and women and children carry their

flowers on May morning to deck the wells.

Passing southward to the wild coast of Cornwall, we find the same

lingering reverence for many a gushing fountain; for

“Springs, that with their thousand crystal bubbles,

Burst from the bosom of some desert rock,

In secret solitude.”

Just as in the days of Cæsar, the old Druids foretold the future by

watching the bubbles that rose in these clear waters as they dropped

pebbles therein; so to this day the Cornish peasant casts in pebbles or

bent pins, and watches their course to learn what may be in store for

him and his. Especially at St. Madron’s Well, a great number of people

still assemble at sunrise on the first Sunday in May, bringing sickly

children to bathe in its healing waters, and tying scraps of rag on the

bushes near as votive offerings. Near this well stands an ancient

cromlech, which a neighbouring farmer in an evil hour determined to pull

down for his own building purposes. He succeeded in pulling the stones

out of their place, but not all his horses and not all his men could do

more. The stones remain; but from that hour all went wrong with the

covetous farmer. His crops failed, his cattle died, and the people’s

reverence for the old stones and the old well grew stronger than ever. A

very similar story is told of another foolish farmer who tried to steal

the granite basin from St. Nunn’s Well, in Pelynt, as being a desirable

pig’s trough. The heavy stone broke its chain, and rolled back to its

place; the oxen which drew it, died; the owner became lame and

speechless. Would that the same condign punishment had overtaken some of

our Northern Goths!

The efficacy of these wells does not seem to be limited to the first

Sunday in May. There are certain Cornish wells to which the people

resort on the first three Wednesdays in May; as, for instance, St.

Euny’s Well—a clear spring at the foot of a hill called Carn Brea. Nor

is it only in cases of sickness that they are visited. Dr. O’Connor

mentions having asked a very old man what possible advantage he expected

from frequenting such wells as were situated close to old blasted oaks,

or to some upright, unhewn stone; and what was the meaning of sticking

rags on the branches of such trees, and spitting on them. His answer,

and that of other old men, was that their ancestors always did it; that

it was a preservative against _Gaesa-Draoidact_—_i.e._, the sorceries of

the Druids; that their cattle were thereby preserved from infectious

diseases, and that the fairies were likewise pleased by this attention.

Some of these Cornish wells are as efficacious for the cure of insanity

as those in our own Highlands. Thus at St. Nunn’s, in the parish of

Alternum, any unhappy maniac was tossed headlong into the deep pool, and

thrown to and fro in the water, backwards and forwards, till he was

quite exhausted—a process which was called _boussening_ or bathing.

After this the patient was carried to church, and masses were sung over

him. This process was repeated again and again, till his feverish lunacy

was chilled, either by death or recovery!

Of the fishing-wells, some have high repute in deciding questions of

supremacy between man and wife. St. Keynan has bequeathed to a well in

Cornwall, and also to one in South Wales, the power of conferring the

mastery on whichever of a young couple first drinks of it after their

marriage. One aggrieved husband confesses his wife’s superior wit in

these lines:—

“After the wedding I hurried away,

And left my wife in the porch:

But in faith, she had been wiser than I,

For she took a bottle to church!”

If we cross the Channel, we find similar wells in Brittany; as, for

instance, that of St. Anne of Auray, where the worshippers, after making

their confession in due form within the church, come forth and walk

thrice, sunwise, round the well, and then return to their devotions in

the church. From the time of Charlemagne, successive edicts have striven

to put down well-worship in France; and with as little success as in our

own land.

Strange hints of the old faith also reveal themselves dimly through the

traditions which relate to the principal churches of St. Michael, just

as on some old palimpsest the curious scholar discerns faint traces of

the characters first inscribed thereon, and but partially erased by the

later scribe. Both at Mont S. Michel and at Monte Galgano, in Southern

Italy, the mystic waters, and still more mystic bull, are strangely

interwoven with the legend of the archangel. Thus, on the Monte Galgano,

a herdsman is said to have pursued a refractory bull into a cavern on

the very summit of the mountain, and, drawing a bow, would have slain

him; but lo! the arrow returning, pierced the archer to the heart. Then

the owner of the herd appealed to St. Michael, who, appearing in visible

majesty, revealed the cause of the herdsman’s death—namely, that by

seeking to slay the bull, he had profaned a cave, especially sacred to

St. Michael himself; who further revealed that within the cave there

flowed a hidden stream of limpid waters for the healing of all diseases,

while beyond, there stood three mystic altars, decked by angelic hands.

But the bull was no more seen. On this spot Galgano erected the first

church dedicated to St. Michael.

Again, we hear how the archangel revealed to the Bishop of Avranches

that on the very highest point of the detached crag, now known as the

Mont S. Michel, there was concealed a living bull, and also a

well-spring of pure water, and that where the bull had trampled the

earth, a church was to be erected. The Bishop repaired to the crag,

found the bull and the fountain, and built a small church, which in

after years was replaced by that magnificent abbey whose massive towers

and pinnacles, cresting the rocky, wave-beaten peak, have already

“braved the tempests of a thousand years.”

As we listen to these Christian legends, we are carried dreamily back to

the still older days, when healing waters and light and fire were

adored; when the sun’s daily victory over the dark serpent of night was

a matter of religious rejoicing, and the mighty bull was his recognised

symbol of strength and power. From these to the triumphant archangel,

and the crushed dragon, with the shadowy mysterious bull, and the hidden

fountain of crystal waters in the background, the sequence seems so

natural, that we need not wonder to find that all along the coast of

Brittany and Cornwall the adoration of St. Michael was the branch of

Christianity which found readiest acceptance among the people—a fact

which accounts for the multitude of churches along these shores which

bear his name.

Comparatively few traces now remain in those isles of the worship of the

moon-goddess, Ashtaroth, or

“Astoreth, whom the Phœnicians called

Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;

To whose bright image nightly by the moon

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs,

In Sion also, not unsung....”

Some lingering notion of her influence doubtless inspired the extreme

reverence with which the Highlanders and Islanders have always noted all

changes of the moon. So late as the year 1700, the latter invariably

selected the time of the moon’s increase for cutting their peat and

rushes, building their earthen dykes _and felling timber_ (hence we

assume they _had_ some trees then!) asserting that all manner of evils

would attend their labour, should these things be done at the time of

her decrease. As to the timber, they certainly have left little for

their descendants! A birth or a marriage at the time of the full moon

was accounted lucky; whereas to marry, or to kill a beast for food while

the moon was waning, would have been the height of folly. In fact, no

important business was commenced at the wane.

It is but a few years since the people of Morayshire used to gather long

sprays of woodbine and ivy during the increase of the moon in March.

These they twisted into wreaths, and kept them till the following March.

Sick children were (as we have noticed) passed thrice through the

wreaths, and likewise cattle, and their cure was considered almost

certain. Shaw mentions having often seen this done. Even in England

there are still some remote corners, such as Dartmoor, where it is

considered very dangerous to cut children’s hair in March, at certain

phases of the moon.

In Orkney the moon worship seems to have lingered longer than in most of

the isles. Even in the present century the people used to assemble on

New Year’s night and dance by moonlight round an upright Druid stone.

Precisely the same custom is said to be still observed at the village of

Croisic in France. In Orkney it was formerly _de rigueur_ for all young

couples to repair by moonlight to the semi-circle of great stones at

Stennis, known as the Temple of Odin (the Scandinavian sun-god), whom

the woman, kneeling on the ground, must invoke. Then the lovers plighted

their troth by clasping hands through the perforated stone of Odin. This

pledge was recognized as legal, and so late as the year 1760 we hear how

the elders of the kirk punished a girl’s false love, because he had

broken the promise of Odin.

But binding as was this ceremony, there was, nevertheless, provision

made for the untying of such matrimonial bonds as proved unbearable, and

that, by a simpler process than the Divorce Court; for the unhappy

couple had only to adjourn to the circle, or in later years to the kirk

at Stennis, and thence go forth, one by the north, the other by the

south door, a ceremony which was held to be a legal divorce, each being

free straightway to make a new selection. A simple and more poetic form

of betrothal was for the lad and lass to stand on either side of a

narrow brook, and to clasp hands across the stream, calling on the moon

to witness their pledge. Sometimes the young couple each took a handful

of meal, and kneeling down, with a bowl between them, emptied their

hands therein, and mixed the meal; at the same time taking an oath on

the Bible never to sever till death should them part. A case was tried

in Dalkeith in 1872, where this simple marriage ceremony was proved by

Scotch law to be legally binding. But the commonest, and certainly the

most curious custom of betrothal was that of thumb-licking, when lovers

licked their thumbs and pressed them together, vowing constancy. This

was held binding as an oath, and to break a vow so made was equivalent

to perjury. This custom is still quite common in Ross-shire, on

concluding all manner of bargains, such as sales of cattle or grain.

Hence the saying, “I’ll gie ye my thumb on it,” or, “I’ll lay my thoomb

on that,” expressing that the statement last made is satisfactory. There

are men still in the prime of life who remember when the custom of

thumb-licking was the recognised conclusion of business transactions,

even so far south as the Clyde, and not unknown in Glasgow itself!

Whatever may have been the origin of this quaint ceremony, it is curious

to remember that the ancient Indian custom on sealing a bargain or

conferring a gift was to pour water into the hand of the recipient, as

is shown on many sculptures. Probably the thumb-licking was a convenient

substitute for the original symbol.

Certainly it is curious to trace back some of these simple customs to

their origin. How little we think, as we kiss our hands to the young

moon, that more than three thousand years ago, Job, the grand old

Arabian patriarch, spoke of this very action as of a sin to be punished:

a denial of the Creator![47] There seems always to have been some

difficulty in determining under what sex to adore the host of Heaven.

The feminine Sun, and Moon masculine of the Germans certainly sound

incongruous in our ears. In Northern India, also, as with the old

Scandinavians, the moon is worshipped as a male divinity, under the name

of Chandra (silvery), at whose great festivals all devout Hindus appear

in white raiment, with silver ornaments. They sit on white cloths, and

make offerings of milk and white sugar—gifts which surely must be more

acceptable to the heavenly bodies than such libations of swine’s blood,

as we are told the priestesses of the Philippine Isles, pour out to the

stars (whom they adore as the children of the Sun and the Moon), and

wherewith they mark the worshippers on the forehead.

The moon seems always to have found more favour with the women than the

men, and while we hear of the old Highlanders taking off their bonnet to

the rising sun, the women reserved their homage for the new moon. Any

lassie who desired to invoke her protection, and crave her good

influence in her sweethearting, had to go out at night and watch for the

first new moon of the new year. Then kneeling on a “yerd-fast stane”

(that is, one fixed immovably in the earth like the Druid altars) she

was to lean her back against a tree, and thus wait for the moment when

she might hail the pale crescent as it rose above the horizon. Bitterly

cold work this must have been, on a chilly night in January, but with

such an object in view, what mattered the freezing blast? _Le jeu valait

bien la chandelle!_

How often we have laughed at the story of the lassie who thus went out

to invoke the lady-moon, and pray that she would speedily send her a

faithful swain. Now in the ivy behind her sat a great white owl, whose

eyes winked and blinked and twinkled as he said “Who-o-oooo?” “Oh!”

cried the lassie, “I dinna mind _who_. _Just anybody!_” Thereupon she

returned home in all faith, and having found a suitable love, sent all

her friends and companions forth on a similar errand.

All these legends of old Pagan times have tempted me to wander very far

away from the green shores of Skye, along which we were sailing; but,

knowing that such old lore is as dear to you as to myself, I make no

apology for having spun such a yarn. However, it really is high time to

return to the little yacht, and glide onward on our pleasant way,

congratulating ourselves that our barque is no frail curragh of

wickerwork and raw hides, nor our merry blue-jackets grey barbarians

tattooed with woad!