The Shetland News, February 1st, 1913, p. 5. As January 5th is reckoned Christmas in Shetland, the celebration of Up-helly-a' falls on January 29th. See J. Nicolson, in The World's Work and Play, February, 1906, pp. 283 sqq. For further information relating to the ceremony I am indebted to the kindness of Sheriff-Substitute David J. Mackenzie (formerly of Lerwick, now of Kilmarnock). According to one of his correspondents, the Rev. Dr. J. Willcock of Lerwick, the present elaborate form of the ceremony dates only from 1882, when the Duke of Edinburgh visited Lerwick on naval business, and Up-helly-a' was celebrated in his honour on a grander scale than ever before. Yet Dr. Willcock apparently does not deny the antiquity of the festival in a simpler form, for in his letter he says: “In former times an old boat filled with tar was set on fire and dragged about, as were also lighted tar-barrels.” Another authority on Shetland antiquities, Mr. Gilbert Goudie, writes to Sheriff Mackenzie that “the kicking about and burning a tar-barrel is very old in Lerwick.” Compare County Folk-lore, iii. Orkney and Shetland Islands, collected by G. F. Black (London, 1903), p. 205: “Formerly, blazing tar-barrels were dragged about the town, and afterwards, with the first break of morning, dashed over the knab into the sea.” Up-helly-a', the Shetland name for Antinmas, is no doubt the same with Uphalyday, which Dr. J. Jamieson (Dictionary of the Scottish Language, New Edition, iv. 676) defines as “the first day after the termination of the Christmas holidays,” quoting two official documents of a.d. 1494 and 1541 respectively.
I have to thank my friend Miss Anderson of Barskimming, Mauchline, Ayrshire, for kindly calling my attention to this interesting relic of the past.
Ovid, Ibis, 467 sq.:
“Aut te devoveat certis Abdera diebus
Saxaque devotum grandine plura petant,”
with the two scholia quoted respectively by M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste, p. 108 note 6, and by O. Schneider, in his Callimachea (Leipsic, 1870-1873), ii. 684. The scholiast refers to Callimachus as his authority.
J. A. MacCulloch, in Dr. J. Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. (Edinburgh, 1910) pp. 78 sqq. Compare S. de Ricci, “Le calendrier Gaulois de Coligny,” Revue Celtique, xix. (1898) pp. 213-223; id., “Le calendrier Celtique de Coligny,” Revue Celtique, xxi. (1900) pp. 10-27; id., “Un passage remarquable du calendrier de Coligny,” Revue Celtique, xxiv. (1903) pp. 313-316; J. Loth, “L'année Celtique,” Revue Celtique, xxv. (1904) pp. 113-162; Sir John Rhys, “The Coligny Calendar”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1909-1910, pp. 207 sqq. As the calendar stands, the number of days in the ordinary year is 355, not 354, seven of the months having thirty days and five of them twenty-nine days. But the month Equos has attached to it the sign ANM, which is attached to all the months of twenty-nine days but to none of the months of thirty days except Equos, all of which, except Equos, are marked with the sign MAT. Hence, following a suggestion of M. S. de Ricci (Revue Celtique, xxi. 25), I suppose that the month Equos had regularly twenty-nine days instead of thirty, and that the attribution of thirty days to it is an error of the scribe or mason who engraved the calendar.
In the Coligny calendar the summer solstice seems to be marked by the word trinouxtion affixed to the seventeenth day of the first month (Samonios, nearly equivalent to our June). As interpreted by Sir John Rhys (op. cit. p. 217), the word means “a period of three nights of equal length.” If he is right, it follows that the Celts who constructed the calendar had observed the summer solstice.
P. Jensen, “Elamitische Eigennamen,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vi. (1892) pp. 47-70; compare ib. pp. 209-212. All Jensen's etymologies are accepted by W. Nowack (Lehrbuch der hebräischen Archäologie, Freiburg i. Baden and Leipsic, 1894, ii. 199 sq.); H. Gunkel (Schöpfung und Chaos, Göttingen, 1895, pp. 310 sq.); D. G. Wildeboer (in his commentary on Esther, pp. 173 sqq., forming part of K. Marti's Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum alten Testament, Freiburg i. B. 1898); Th. Nöldeke (s.v. “Esther,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. ii. coll. 1404 sq.); and H. Zimmern (in E. Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,3 Berlin, 1902, pp. 485, 516 sq.). On the other hand, Br. Meissner (Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, I. (1896) p. 301) and M. Jastrow (The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 686, note 2) suspend their judgment as to the identification of Haman and Vashti with Elamite deities, though they apparently regard the identification of Mordecai and Esther with Marduk and Ishtar as quite certain. The doubt which these scholars felt as to the derivation of one at least of these names (Vashti) is now known to be well founded. See below, p. [367], note 3.
It deserves to be noted that on the twenty-seventh day of the month Tammuz the heathen of Harran used to sacrifice nine male lambs to Haman, “the supreme God, the father of the gods,” and they ate and drank on that day. Chwolsohn suggests a comparison of the festival with the Athenian Cronia. See D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (St. Petersburg, 1856), ii. 27 sq., 211 sqq.
Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1195 sqq.: