married and unmarried men of the parish to
play a match at hand-ball. The day, till
within a few years of the date mentioned,
had from time immemorial been ushered in
by ringing the church-bell. This long
persisted in, in defiance of the minister, was at
last discontinued. The ball was the remaining
feature of the festival. The first
proceeding occurred at two o'clock in the afternoon,
when the ball was thrown over the
church. The contest then began; the one
party striving to convey the ball to a given
point about half a mile up the valley, and the
other party trying to take it about a similar
distance in the opposite direction. The
down-water winning place was the Lady's
Well, a famous spring, at or near which
tradition says the Virgin Mary descended
and left her foot-print on a large stone. In
the sermon referred to, the preacher pointed
out that the foot-ball sport of Fastern's E'en
was a mongrel relic of paganism and Popery,
in which it was sinful to participate. He
also said that the superstitious practices of
the district, peculiar to the daft days, to
Beltane, and to Candlemas, were equally to
be eschewed.

Less than fifty years ago, the magistrates
of Canongate, Edinburgh, used to walk in
procession to church upon the first Sunday
after Beltane, decorated with flowers, and
carrying large nosegays. This observance
was evidently a modified relic of the ancient
festival of the sun; and the original meaning
of the custom must have been an expression
of gratitude to that luminary, deified under
the name of Baal, for the first-fruits of his
genial influence. We trace to a similar
origin—to Baal worship—the dressing of the
May-pole, and the various May-day gambols,
May-day and Beltane being identical.

In Scotland, during the reign of its sixth
James, the season of Beltane was one of
great merriment, as we learn from the royal
poet himself. He thus opens his Peblis to
the Play:

      At Beltane, quhen ilk bodie bownis
         To Peblis to the play,
      To heir the singin and the sonndis,
         The solace suth to say
      Be firth and forrest furth they found;
         They graythit tham full gay.

The anxiety still manifested by many
superstitious persons, especially of the female
sex, in various parts of south as well as of
north Britain, to see the sun rise on May Day
or Beltane, clearly gives Britons some title to
be still ranked in faith with the ancient
Druids and the modern fire-worshippers of
the East. Young ladies do not always bear
this in mind when they confidingly bathe
their faces with dew at sun-rise on a May-
day's morning, with a view to secure
resistlessly blooming cheeks for at least twelve-
months. But the May-morning frolics and
superstitions are fast disappearing. We can
do little more now than speak of the past.
When Fergusson the Scottish poet wrote,
about seventeen hundred and seventy, the
Edinburgh maidens met annually at
daybreak on the first of May at the well beside
the ruined chapel of Saint Anthony, at the
base of Arthur's seat; and then even the
venerable grandfathers, in rear of the merry
young groups of both sexes, ascended the
hill to hail the first appearance of the
May-sun.

The observances of May Day have been
supposed by many to owe their origin
exclusively to the festival of Flora, which was
celebrated in most countries on the four last
days of April. This belief has probably
arisen from the dates being so near, and from
garlands having been used in the worship of
the Sun as well as in that of the Goddess of
Flowers. It is exceedingly probable,
however, that the most ancient portion of the
May Day observances of Britain are a
Christianised mixture of the rites both of the
Sun and of Flora. In any case, it is very
clear that some of the customs which we
have noticed are peculiarly those of Sun-
worship, and belong especially to Beltane,
the chief day of Baal's fire. In the customs
of Ireland, the remains of the pagan fire-
festivals are very striking. The great festival
of the Sun in Ireland, seems to have been
held, at least in later times, on the twenty-
first of June, to celebrate the summer solstice.
The children and cattle of the peasantry are
then made to pass through fires lighted in
various districts. The Roman Catholics light
these fires by the new, and the Protestants
by the old style,—a fact clearly showing the
custom to be pre-Christian. This diversity
of date in the observance by the two sects is
a curious circumstance in the history of the
pagan rite, which has been engrafted upon a
pliant Christianity. Here we may remark,
that in the popular superstitions in which
fire is used, the pagan element is strong.
Among these observances may be particularly
mentioned the Tindles of Derbyshire. In the
Gentleman's Magazine for seventeen hundred
and eighty-three, seventeen hundred and
eighty-four, and seventeen hundred and
eighty-eight, there are some interesting
notices regarding the custom of lighting tires
upon the hills on All Souls' Eve. It is stated
that at the village of Findern, in Derbyshire,
the boys and girls go every year, on the
second of November (All Souls' Eve), to the
adjoining common, and light up a number of
small fires among the furze growing there,
calling them Tindles. The popular notion
was, that the custom was a relic of Popery,
and had originated in a belief that the
Tindles lighted the souls out of purgatory.
The commons have been enclosed, and the
Tindles are now in consequence little more
than a tradition. A writer in the Gentleman's
Magazine for seventeen hundred and
seventy-eight, speaks of "a custom observed