ugh fast becoming obsolete, or passing into mere
popular customs of the country, which the peasantry observe without
thinking of their origin. About 1769, when Mr. Pennant made his tour,
the ceremony of the Baaltein, Beltane, or First of May, though varying
in different districts of the Highlands, was yet in strict observance,
and the cake, which was then baken with scrupulous attention to certain
rites and forms, was divided into fragments, which were formally
dedicated to birds or beasts of prey that they, or rather the being
whose agents they were, might spare the flocks and herds.[9]

[Footnote 9: See Tennant's "Scottish Tour," vol. i. p. III. The
traveller mentions that some festival of the same kind was in his time
observed in Gloucestershire.]

Another custom of similar origin lingered late among us. In many
parishes of Scotland there was suffered to exist a certain portion of
land, called _the gudeman's croft_, which was never ploughed or
cultivated, but suffered to remain waste, like the TEMENOS of a pagan
temple, Though it was not expressly avowed, no one doubted that "the
goodman's croft" was set apart for some evil being; in fact, that it was
the portion of the arch-fiend himself, whom our ancestors distinguished
by a name which, while it was generally understood, could not, it was
supposed, be offensive to the stern inhabitant of the regions of
despair. This was so general a custom that the Church published an
ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage.

This singular custom sunk before the efforts of the clergy in the
seventeenth century; but there must still be many alive who, in
childhood, have been taught to look with wonder on knolls and patches of
ground left uncultivated, because, whenever a ploughshare entered the
soil, the elementary spirits were supposed to testify their displeasure
by storm and thunder. Within our own memory, many such places,
sanctified to barrenness by some favourite popular superstition,
existed, both in Wales and Ireland, as well as in Scotland; but the high
price of agricultural produce during the late war renders it doubtful if
a veneration for greybearded superstition has suffered any one of them
to remain undesecrated. For the same reason the mounts called Sith
Bhruaith were respected, and it was deemed unlawful and dangerous to cut
wood, dig earth and stones, or otherwise disturb them.[10]

[Footnote 10: See "Essay on the Subterranean Commonwealth," by M