Mr. Thornber, the historian of Blackpool, and Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, of Burnley, author of a series of valuable papers on Lancashire superstitions published in the "Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society," have furnished some curious information of a local character with reference to this ancient fire-worship. The latter says:—"Such fires are still lighted in Lancashire, on Hallowe'en, under the names of Beltains or Teanleas; and even the cakes which the Jews are said to have made in honour of the Queen of Heaven, are yet to be found at this season amongst the inhabitants of the banks of the Ribble.... Both the fires and cakes, however, are now connected with superstitious notions respecting purgatory, &c., but their origin and perpetuation will scarcely admit of doubt." He further observes:—"The practice of 'causing children to pass through the fire to Moloch,' so strongly reprobated by the prophet of old, may be cited as an instance in which Christianity has not yet been able to efface all traces of one of the oldest forms of heathen worship."
Mr. Thornber says:—"The conjoint worship of the sun and moon, the Samen and Sama, husband and wife of nature, has been from these early times so firmly implanted that ages have not uprooted it. Christianity has not banished it.... In my youth, on Hallowe'en, under the name of Teanla fires, I have seen the hills throughout the country illuminated with sacred flames, and I can point out many a cairn of fire-broken stones—the high places of the votaries of Bel—where his rites have been performed on the borders of the Ribble age after age. Nor at this day are these mysteries silenced; with a burning whisp of straw at the point of a fork on Sama's festival at the eve of All-hallows, the farmer in some districts of the Fylde encircles his field to protect the coming crop from noxious weeds, the tare and darnel; the old wife refuses to sit the eggs under her crackling hen after sunset; the ignorant boy sits astride a stile, as he looks at the new moon; the bride walks not widdershins to church on her nuptial moon; and if the aged parent addresses not the young pair in the words of Hanno, the Carthaginian in the Pœnula of Plautus, 'O that the good Bel-Samen may favour them,' or, like the Irish peasant, 'The blessing of Sama and Bel go with you;' still, we have often heard the benediction, 'May the sun shine bright upon you,' in accordance with the old adage,
'Blest is the corpse the rain fell on,
Blest the bride on whom the sun shone.'"
M. Du Chaillu, in his recent "Journey into Ashango-land and further penetration into Equatorial Africa," speaks of a certain superstitious reverence for fire and faith in its medical virtues by the inhabitants of the region he traversed. He relates the following beautiful story respecting their astronomical notions:—"I was not always so solitary in taking my nightly observations, for sometimes one and another of my men or Mayola" (the king or chief), "would stand by me. Of course, I could never make them comprehend what I was doing. Sometimes I used to be amused by their ideas about the heavenly bodies. Like all other remarkable natural objects, they are the subject of whimsical myths amongst them. According to them, the sun and moon are of the same age, but the sun brings daylight and gladness and the moon brings darkness, witchcraft, and death—for death comes from sleep, and sleep commences in darkness. The sun and moon, they say, once got angry with each other, each one claiming to be the eldest. The moon said, 'Who are you, to dare to speak to me? You are alone; you have no people. What! are you to consider yourself equal to me? Look at me,' she continued, showing the stars shining around her, 'these are my people; I am not alone in the world like you.' The sun answered, 'Oh, moon, you bring witchcraft, and it is you have killed all my people, or I should have as many attendants as you.' According to the negroes, people are more liable to die when the moon first makes her appearance and when she is last visible. They say that she calls the people her insects and devours them. The moon with them is the emblem of time and death."
The Teutonic tribes appear, contrary to the general faith of their Aryan kindred, to have regarded the sun as a female and the moon as a male deity. Palgrave, in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons," says:—"They had an odd notion that if they addressed that power as a goddess, their wives would be their masters."
I am strongly inclined to think that the continuance of the practice of lighting bonfires on the 5th of November owes quite as much to the associations connected with the ancient teanla fires of Allhalloween, as to any present Protestant horror of the treason of Guy Fawkes and his band of conspirators. It may be quite true that the House of Commons, in February, 1605-6 did ordain that the 5th of November should be kept as "a holiday FOR EVER in thankfulness to God for our deliverance, and detestation of the Papists;" but ordinances of this class seldom produce more than a temporary excitement amongst large masses of the people. I remember, in my youth, "assisting" at the celebration of several "bonfire days" in Preston and its neighbourhood, sometimes as amateur pyrotechnic artist, when we enjoyed our "fun" without any reference to Protestant or Catholic proclivities. Few, except the better educated, knew what the "Gunpowder Plot" really meant. Some associated it mainly with our own pyrotechnic efforts and other attendant consumption of the explosive compound, on the then special occasion. I rather fancy the ancient November "Allhallow fires" have in their decadence, merged into the modern "Gunpowder Plot" bonfires; and hence the reason why, in some rural districts, they yet abound, while they are fast disappearing from our more populous towns. I was surprised to find, when riding on an omnibus from Manchester for about five miles on the Bury-road, on the evening of a recent anniversary of this "holiday," that I could count, near and on the horizon, fires of this description by the dozen, and yet, while in Manchester, I had remained ignorant of the fact that bonfire associations were influencing the conduct of any section of society. The merging of one superstition, custom, habit, or tradition, into another, is one of the most ordinary facts of history.
Mr. Richard Edwards, in his "Land's End District," gives a very graphic account of the bonfires lighted up in Cornwall on Midsummer eve. Some of the details sufficiently resemble those of our northern "gunpowder plot" demonstrations to prove that a Guy Fawkes and an Act of Parliament are not absolutely necessary to make a bonfire festivity attractive to the descendants of the fire-worshippers of old. He says:—
"On these eves a line of tar barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in Penzance. On either side of this line, young men and women pass up and down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those of the tar barrels. Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm, are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets. In St. Just and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their father's employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same substance. As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same little batteries serve for many years.... In the early part of the evening, children may be seen wreathing wreaths of flowers,—a custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when they danced around the fires. At the close of the fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in hand, forming a long string, and run through the streets, playing 'thread the needle,' heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and ofttimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have, on these occasions, seen boys following one another, jumping through flames higher than themselves. But while this is now done innocently, in every sense of the word, we all know that the passing of children through fire was a very common act of idolatry; and the heathen believed that all persons, and all living things, submitted to this ordeal, would be preserved from evil throughout the year."
I remember well the bonfire processions during election periods, at Preston, above forty years ago, in the palmy days of the late Mr. Henry Hunt. It is not improbable that a remnant of the old superstition hovered about them; and that a latent belief in the "luck-bringing" qualities of fire, to a slight extent, influenced their promoters.
A few years ago I visited, in company with Mr. Thornber, a field at Hardhorn, near Poulton, and was shown by that gentleman some of the stones yet remaining of what he has for many years regarded as the remains of a very ancient Teanlea cairn. Some of the stones bore marks of fire. The mound must, however, have been neglected for a length of time, inasmuch as the shrewd old farmer who had destroyed it had no recollection or traditionary knowledge respecting the use to which it had been appropriated. But from the ashes and other indications of fire which the upper portion of the cairn presented, the worthy husbandman felt confident that "it hed bin a blacksmith's forge i' th' olden time."