hristmas, Easter, and
May Day. Of these, the first and the last were closely connected with
the seigneurial system. On Michaelmas the habitant came to pay the
annual rental for his lands; on May Day he rendered the Maypole homage
which, has been already described. Christmas and Easter were the great
festivals of the Church and as such were celebrated with religious
fervor and solemnity. In addition, minor festivals, chiefly religious
in character, were numerous, so much so that their frequency even in
the months of cultivation was the subject of complaint by the civil
authorities, who felt that these holidays took altogether too
much time from labor. Sunday was a day not only of worship but of
recreation. Clad in his best raiment, every one went to Mass, whatever
the distance or the weather. The parish church indeed was the emblem
of village solidarity, for it gathered within its walls each Sunday
morning all sexes and ages and ranks. The habitant did not
separate his religion from his work or his amusements; the outward
manifestations of his faith were not to his mind things of another
world; the church and its priests were the center and soul of his
little community. The whole countryside gathered about the church
doors after the service while the _capitaine de la cote_, the local
representative of the intendant, read the decrees that had been sent
to him from the seals of the mighty at the Chateau de St. Louis. That
duty over, there was a garrulous interchange of local gossip with a
retailing of such news as had dribbled through from France. The crowd
then melted away in groups to spend the rest of the day in games or
dancing or in friendly visits of one family with another.

Especially popular among the young people of each parish were the
_corvees recreatives_, or "bees" as we call them nowadays in our
rural communities. There were the _epuchlette_ or corn-husking,
the _brayage_ or flax-beating, and others of the same sort. The
harvest-home or _grosse-gerbe_, celebrated when the last load had been
brought in from the fields, and the _Ignolee_ or welcoming of the New
Year, were also occasions of goodwill, noise, and revelry. Dancing
was by all odds the most popular pastime, and every parish had its
fiddler, who was quite as indispensable a factor in the life of the
village as either the smith or the notary. Every wedding was the
occasion for terpsichorean festivities which lasted all day long.

The habitant liked