.
They possess the earth on Christmas, St. John's Day, and All
Saints'. In Finistere, that western point of France, there is a
saying that on the Eve of All Souls' "there are more dead in every
house than sands on the shore." The dead have the power to charm
mortals and take them away, and to foretell the future. They must
not be spoken of directly, any more than the fairies of the
Scottish border, or met with, for fear of evil results.

By the Bretons of the sixth century the near-by island of Britain,
which they could just see on clear days, was called the Otherworld.
An historian, Procopius, tells how the people nearest Britain were
exempted from paying tribute to the Franks, because they were
subject to nightly summons to ferry the souls of the dead across in
their boats, and deliver them into the hands of the keeper of
souls. Farther inland a black bog seemed to be the entrance to an
otherworld underground. One location which combined the ideas of an
island and a cave was a city buried in the sea. The people imagined
they could hear the bells of Ker-Is ringing, and joyous music
sounding, for though this was a city of the dead, it resembled the
fairy palaces of Ireland, and was ruled by King Grallon and his
fair daughter Dahut, who could lure mortals away by her beauty and
enchantments.

The approach of winter is believed to drive like the flocks, the
souls of the dead from their cold cheerless graves to the food and
warmth of home. This is why November Eve, the night before the
first day of winter, was made sacred to them.

"When comes the harvest of the year
Before the scythe the wheat will fall."

BOTREL: _Songs of Brittany._

The harvest-time reminded the Bretons of the garnering by that
reaper, Death. On November Eve milk is poured on graves, feasts and
candles set out on the tables, and fires lighted on the hearths to
welcome the spirits of departed kinsfolk and friends.

In France from the twelfth to the fourteenth century stone
buildings like lighthouses were erected in cemeteries. They were
twenty or thirty feet high, with lanterns on top. On Hallowe'en
they were kept burning to safeguard the people from the fear of
night-wandering spirits and the dead, so they were called
"lanternes des morts."

The cemetery is the social center of the Breton village. It is at
once meeting-place, playground, park, and church. The tombs that
outline the hills make the place seem one vast