I have said that some remains of the fire worship of Bel or Beil, until very recently, might be found in Lancashire and the North of England, as well as at present in Scotland and Ireland. Indeed, I am inclined to think certain English customs of the peasantry, at the present day, may, with perfect truthfulness, be referred to this source, although the original objects of the ceremonies may have been, either wholly or in part, obliterated by time, or obscured by the action of more recent rites and traditional observances.
Amongst these may be instanced a superstition prevalent in the North of England and many other places, that a funeral procession, when arrived at the churchyard, must move in the sun's course; that is, from east to west; otherwise evil resulted to the spirit of the departed. This sentiment is not confined to religious ceremonies, but is respected when passing the bottle in convivial assemblies; and in several other matters of ordinary every-day life. The fact that Brand, and most of the earlier writers after the Reformation, speak of these superstitions as "Popish," in no way invalidates the assignment to them of an Aryan origin. As early as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute the Great, we find laws strictly prohibiting the people from worshipping, or venerating, "the sun, moon, sacred groves and woods, and hallowed hills and fountains." Decrees were again and again pronounced in vain against many of these practices by the ecclesiastical authorities. In the canons of the Northumberland clergy, quoted by Wilkins and Hallam, we read as follows:—
"If a king's thane deny this (the practice of heathen superstition), let twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred (or equals, maga), and twelve British strangers; and if he fail, then let him pay for his breach of law, twelve half-marcs: if a landowner (or lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken as for a royal thane; and if he fail, let him pay six half-marcs: If a ceorl deny it, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for the others; and if he fail, let him pay twelve oræ for his breach of law."
This demonstrates that all classes, whatever their rank, found it difficult to shake off the superstitions of their forefathers. Some of them became amalgamated with more modern festive ceremonies, and were eventually intermingled with the formulæ of the Christian worship itself. Sir Jno. Lubbock, in his recent work, "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man," endorses this view. He says: "When man, either by natural progress, or the influence of a more advanced race, rises to the conception of a higher religion, he still retains his old beliefs, which long linger on, side by side with, and yet in utter opposition to, the higher creed. The new and more powerful spirit is an addition to the old Pantheon, and diminishes the importance of the older deities; gradually, the worship of the latter sinks in the social scale, and becomes confined to the ignorant and the young. Thus a belief in witchcraft still flourishes among our agricultural labourers and the lowest classes in our great cities, and the deities of our ancestors survive in the nursery tales of our children. We must, therefore, expect to find in each race, traces—nay, more than traces—of lower religions."
In the Irish Glossary of Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel, written in the beginning of the tenth century, the author says, in his time "four great fires were lighted up on the four great festivals of the Druids, viz., in February, May, August, and November." General Valancey says the Irish have discontinued their November fires and substituted candles; while the Welsh, though they retain the fire, "can give no reason for the illumination." All Saints' Day is on the first of November, and its vigil is termed Allhalloween, or Nutcrack night. Those festivals had all reference to the seasons, and their influence on the fruitfulness of the earth. Brand says "it is customary on this night with young people in the north of England to dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs." Robert Burns tells us that Halloween is thought to be a "night when witches, devils, and other mischief making beings, are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those ærial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary." Scotch girls, on this evening, pull, blindfolded, cabbage stalks, in order to divine the size and figure of their future husbands. Nuts are roasted or flung into the fire for a similar purpose both in Scotland and England. Gay describes the latter ceremony as follows:—
Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame,
And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name;
This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed,
That in a flame of brightest colour blazed;
As blazed the nut so may thy passion grow,
For 'twas thy nut that did so brightly glow!
We possess some interesting accounts of these gatherings in various parts of Scotland during the latter portion of the last century. In Perthshire, heath, broom, and dressings of flax were tied to poles, lighted, and carried round the villages and fields. One minister says the people "set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire is consumed, the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle. There is a stone put in near the circumference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire; and whatever stone is removed out of its place or injured before the next morning, the person represented by that stone is devoted, or fey, and is supposed not to live twelve months from that day. The people received the consecrated fire from the Druid priests next morning, the virtues of which were supposed to continue a year." A similar authority says, "the custom of making a fire in the fields, baking a consecrated cake, &c., on the 1st of May is not yet quite worn out."
In Derbyshire these fires were called Tindles, and were kindled at the close of the last century. In some localities the ceremony is called a Tinley. Sir William Dugdale says, "On All-Hallow Even the master of the family anciently used to carry a bunch of straw, fired, about his corne, saying—
"Fire and red low
Light on my teen low."
In Lancashire they are called tandles and teanlas. In Ireland May-day eve is called neen na Bealtina, the eve of Bael fires. The practice of divination by the roasting of nuts is yet common in Lancashire. The hollow cinder, too, which leaps from a coal fire, is supposed to augur wealth or death to the person against whom it strikes, in proportion as its shape nearest resembles a purse or a coffin.