ctly derived from skin-clad worshippers at
pagan festivals.

MARTINMAS.

Between All Souls' Day and Martinmas (November 11) there are no
folk-festivals of great importance, though on St. Hubert's Day, November
3, in Flemish Belgium special little cakes are made, adorned with the
horn of the saint, the patron of hunting, and are eaten not only by human
beings but by dogs, cats, and other domestic animals.{64} The English
Guy Fawkes Day has already been considered, while November 9, Lord
Mayor's Day, the beginning of the municipal year, may remind us of the
old Teutonic New Year.

Round Martinmas popular customs cluster thickly, as might be expected,
since it marks as nearly as possible the date of the old
beginning-of-winter festival, the feast perhaps at which Germanicus
surprised the Marsi in A.D. 14.{65}

The most obvious feature of Martinmas is its physical feasting. |203|
Economic causes, as we saw in Chapter VI., must have made the middle of
November a great killing season among the old Germans, for the snow which
then began rendered it impossible longer to pasture the beasts, and there
was not fodder enough to keep the whole herd through the winter. Thus it
was a time of feasting on flesh, and of animal sacrifices, as is
suggested by the Anglo-Saxon name given to November by Bede,
_Blot-monath_, sacrifice-month.{66}

Christmas does not seem to have quickly superseded the middle of November
as a popular feast in Teutonic countries; rather one finds an outcome of
the conciliatory policy pursued by Gregory the Great (see Chapter VI.) in
the development of Martinmas. Founded in the fifth century, it was made a
great Church festival by Pope Martin I. (649-654),{67} and it may well
have been intended to absorb and Christianize the New Year festivities of
the Teutonic peoples. The veneration of St. Martin spread rapidly in the
churches of northern Europe, and he came to be regarded as one of the
very chief of the saints.{68} His day is no longer a Church feast of
high rank, but its importance as a folk festival is great.

The tradition of slaughter is preserved in the British custom of killing
cattle on St. Martin's Day--"Martlemas beef"{69}--and in the German
eating of St. Martin's geese and swine.{70} The St. Martin's goose,
indeed, is in Germany as much a feature of the festival as the English
Michaelmas goose is of the September feast of the angels.

In Denmark too a goose is eaten at Martinmas, and from it