But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may
call the aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it
appears not to have been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited
the Land's End of Europe, the islands and promontories that stretch
out into the Atlantic Ocean on the North-West. The principal
fire-festivals of the Celts, which have survived, though in a
restricted area and with diminished pomp, to modern times and even
to our own day, were seemingly timed without any reference to the
position of the sun in the heaven. They were two in number, and fell
at an interval of six months, one being celebrated on the eve of May
Day and the other on Allhallow Even or Hallowe'en, as it is now
commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first of October, the day
preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day. These dates coincide with
none of the four great hinges on which the solar year revolves, to
wit, the solstices and the equinoxes. Nor do they agree with the
principal seasons of the agricultural year, the sowing in spring and
the reaping in autumn.
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