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MAY, 1878.]
ARCHÆOLOGICAL NOTES.
129
embers." The following are selected from many instances of ancient customs in the British Isles. Sir John Sinclair, in the Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1794, states, from the re- port of the minister of Loudoun, in Ayrshire, that "the custom still remains amongst the herds and young people to kindle fires on the high grounds in honour of Beltane" (vol. III. p. 105); and, again, the minister of Callander, in Perthshire, relates that on "Beltein day" (old May-day) the people kindled a fire and toasted a cake, which was divided into as many parts as there were people present, and one part blackened with charcoal ; the bits were then put into a cap and drawn blindfold, and he who drew the black bit was considered devoted to Baal, and obliged to leap three times through the flame (vol. XI. p. 620). In the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1795, an eye-witness relates that on the 21st June 1782 he saw, from the top of the house in which he was staying in Ireland, the fires burning at midnight on every eminence for a radius of thirty miles all around, and that the people danced round the fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through them,-reckoning this to ensure good fortune during the succeeding year. The dancing round and leaping over fires probably did not survive long into the present century, but the kindling the Midsummer fires is hardly yet extinct. I remember, a few years ago, a notice of them having been seen in some of the Scottish Isles; and in 1833 there was a riot in Cork on account of some of the soldiers quartered there refusing to subscribe to the Beltane bonfires. There is not a county in England, from Northumberland to Cornwall, in which there was not some trace of the custom existing in the last century; and in Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall it lingered to within living memory, if indeed it be yet wholly extinct. In Brittany it is still in force; there the peasantry still vigor- ously dance round and leap over the St. John's fires, and two years ago a fine painting by the eminent artist Jules Breton was exhibited in London, entitled La Saint Jean, vividly pourtraying the scene from life. One of the old navi
3" In the month Muharram the first rain fell, Adam and Eve descended on earth, and species were propagated." Herklots.
The sanctit- of fire-treading would also be heightened by its being used as a solemn ordeal. In Asiatic Resparches, vol. I. p. 390, there is & paper on ordeals communicated by Warren Hastings containing this passage:
gators, Johannes Lerius, avers that passing through fire was practised even by the people of Brazil; but, though the Rabbins trace its origin up to Ham, the idolatrous son of Noah, I have been unable to find any notice of its existence in Africa. In all the many records of exploration, from Livingstone and Burton to Schweinfurth and Baker, there is no allusion to it, albeit Africans are tho most saltatory of nations. It can hardly be but that rites existing with so much likeness in far separated ages and countries must have had some common origin, and it does not scem beyond bounds to seek that origin in ages of which the Vedas are a late expression, before that Aryan dispersion which, issuing from the Central-Asian dwelling place, may have carried these primeval observances to the confines of the Western world. But, whether in classic, medieval, or modern times, -whether Palilia, Muharram, Fire-treading, Holi, Mayday or Midsummer festivities, -all seem vestiges day or Midsummer festivities, of the primordial adoration of Spring, and the natural gladsomeness that greets the revival of Nature. As religions change and fade, sach ob. servances become transferred to sun-worship, or associated with local deities, Muhammadan martyrs, or Christian saints, and ideas of expiation or symbolical cleansing by fire obscure the original motive, which would, however, be latent at no great depth, and manifest the common source of its variant forms in many points, as the seasons of celebration, making cattle leap over fires, -as Ovid, at the passage cited in the Fasti, intimates was done, and as was the custom 'in Ireland, and in Maisur, where Captain Mackenzie saw buffaloes driven over the fire-pits; appearing also in the Irish and Indian belief that dancing round the fires ensured good fortune. Established priesthoods would sometimes sanction such customs, sometimes frown on them; as in Upper India Brahmans bless and inaugurate th Holi bonfires, but in the south stand aloof from fire-treading, because usually done in honour of un-Brâhmaņical deities. Antiquarian and mythological research is but the record of the decline, survival, transformation, and interchange of religious observances. "For the fire ordeal an excavation, 9 hands long, 2 spang brond, and I span deep, is made in the ground, and filled with a fire of pipal wood; into this the person accused must walk barefooted, and if his feet be unhurt they hold him blameless; if burned, guilty." In medieval Earope accused persons walked barefoot over heated ploughsharee placed in a line at unequal distances.
