Down to the present time the saying
is current in Carnarvonshire, where allusions to the cutty black sow
are still occasionally made to frighten children. We can now
understand why in Lower Brittany every person throws a pebble into
the midsummer bonfire. Doubtless there, as in Wales and the
Highlands of Scotland, omens of life and death have at one time or
other been drawn from the position and state of the pebbles on the
morning of All Saints' Day. The custom, thus found among three
separate branches of the Celtic stock, probably dates from a period
before their dispersion, or at least from a time when alien races
had not yet driven home the wedges of separation between them.
In the Isle of Man also, another Celtic country, Hallowe'en was
celebrated down to modern times by the kindling of fires,
accompanied with all the usual ceremonies designed to prevent the
baneful influence of fairies and witches.
7. The Midwinter Fires
IF THE HEATHEN of ancient Europe celebrated, as we have good reason
to believe, the season of Midsummer with a great festival of fire,
of which the traces have survived in many places down to our own
time, it is natural to suppose that they should have observed with
similar rites the corresponding season of Midwinter; for Midsummer
and Midwinter, or, in more technical language, the summer solstice
and the winter solstice, are the two great turningpoints in the
sun's apparent course through the sky, and from the standpoint of
primitive man nothing might seem more appropriate than to kindle
fires on earth at the two moments when the fire and heat of the
great luminary in heaven begin to wane or to wax.
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