al
authorities adroitly timed the Nativity of the Virgin so as to coincide
with an old pagan festival of that day, in which fire, noise, and
uproar, if not broken heads and bloodshed, were conspicuous features.
The penny trumpets blown on this occasion recall the like melodious
instruments which figure so largely in the celebration of Befana (the
Eve of Epiphany) at Rome.[565]

Sec. 6. _The Hallowe'en Fires_

[On the other hand the Celts divided their year, not by the solstices,
but by the beginning of summer (the first of May) and the beginning of
winter (the first of November).]

From the foregoing survey we may infer that among the heathen
forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread
fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or
Midsummer Day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice
can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan
ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on earth to coincide with
the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky. If
that was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites had
observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's apparent path in
the sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal calendar to
some extent by astronomical considerations.

[The division seems to have been neither astronomical nor agricultural
but pastoral, being determined by the times when cattle are driven to
and from their summer pasture.]

But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call
the aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not
to have been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End of
Europe, the islands and promontories that stretch out into the Atlantic
ocean on the North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the Celts,
which have survived, though in a restricted area and with diminished
pomp, to modern times and even to our own day, were seemingly timed
without any reference to the position of the sun in the heaven. They
were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one being
celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow Even or
Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first
of October, the day preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day. These
dates coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar
year revolves, to wit, the solstices and t