has been seen, was also a festival of the dead, whose ghosts
were fed at this time.[905]

As the powers of growth were in danger and in eclipse in winter, men
thought it necessary to assist them. As a magical aid the Samhain
bonfire was chief, and it is still lit in the Highlands. Brands were
carried round, and from it the new fire was lit in each house. In North
Wales people jumped through the fire, and when it was extinct, rushed
away to escape the "black sow" who would take the hindmost.[906] The
bonfire represented the sun, and was intended to strengthen it. But
representing the sun, it had all the sun's force, hence those who jumped
through it were strengthened and purified. The Welsh reference to the
hindmost and to the black sow may point to a former human sacrifice,
perhaps of any one who stumbled in jumping through the fire. Keating
speaks of a Druidic sacrifice in the bonfire, whether of man or beast is
not specified.[907] Probably the victim, like the scapegoat, was laden
with the accumulated evils of the year, as in similar New Year customs
elsewhere. Later belief regarded the sacrifice, if sacrifice there was,
as offered to the powers of evil--the black sow, unless this animal is a
reminiscence of the corn-spirit in its harmful aspect. Earlier powers,
whether of growth or of blight, came to be associated with Samhain as
demoniac beings--the "malignant bird flocks" which blighted crops and
killed animals, the _samhanach_ which steals children, and Mongfind the
banshee, to whom "women and the rabble" make petitions on Samhain
eve.[908] Witches, evil-intentioned fairies, and the dead were
particularly active then.

Though the sacrificial victim had come to be regarded as an offering to
the powers of blight, he may once have represented a divinity of growth
or, in earlier times, the corn-spirit. Such a victim was slain at
harvest, and harvest is often late in northern Celtic regions, while the
slaying was sometimes connected not with the harvest field, but with the
later threshing. This would bring it near the Samhain festival. The
slaying of the corn-spirit was derived from the earlier slaying of a
tree or vegetation-spirit embodied in a tree and also in a human or
animal victim. The corn-spirit was embodied in the last sheaf cut as
well as in an animal or human being.[909] This human victim may have
been regarded as a king, since in late popular custom a mock king is
chosen at winter festivals.[910] In other