cestral worship probably took place during that period known as the
Neolithic Age, when the moon, stars, and sun no longer remained the
mysterious in life to be feared and worshipped. In the dreary process of
evolution a gradual development took place, and nature worship and
ancestral veneration evolved into the more comprehensive systems of
Buddha, Confucius, and the later polytheism of Greece, Ancient Tuscany,
and Rome, leaving high and dry, stranded, as it were, in Northern
Europe, Ireland, and North Britain, an undisturbed residuum of
ante-chronological man's superstitions. Evidences of primitive man's
religion are seen in the customs and practices of our rural folk to-day.

In vast forest districts, or in hilly regions far away from the refining
influences of social contact, the old-time superstitions lingered,
changing little in the theme, and inspiring the succeeding generations,
as they unfolded in the long roll-call of life, with the same fears of
the mystery of death and of a future life. One of the customs of recent
practice is fitly described as follows:--

In Yorkshire and in north-west Irish homesteads, and even far away in
the East amongst the Armenian peasantry, a custom was, until late years,
in vogue, of providing a feast for the departed relatives on certain
fixed dates. All Hallows' Eve being one of the occasions a meal was
prepared, and the feast spread as though ordinary living visitants were
going to sit round the "gay and festive board." The chain hanging down
from the centre of the chimney to the fireplace was removed--a boundary
line of the domestic home--but at these times especial care was taken to
remove it so that the "pixies and goblins and elves" could have a
licence to enter the house. In spite of Christian teaching and other
widening influences the belief remained fixed in the minds of the rural
classes that elves, goblins, sprites, pixies, and the manes were stern
realities.

The Erl King of Goethe, a sprite endowed with more than human passions,
elegantly portrays the modern idea of an old theme. How he haunted the
regions of the Black Forest in Thuringia, snatching up children rambling
in the shades of the leafed wood, to kill them in his terrible shambles.
The King of the Wood and the Spirit of the Waters were both early among
the terrors of old-time European peasantry's superstitions.

Another surviving custom, carried out with much picturesque ceremony, is
common to the peoples