homoeopathic magic intended to
assist the sun in his struggle with the powers of darkness. To this day
great bonfires are kindled in the Highlands, and formerly brands were
carried about and the new fire was lit in each house.{40} It would seem
that the Yule log customs (see Chapter X.) are connected with this new
lighting of the house-fire, transferred to Christmas.

In Ireland fire was lighted at this time at a place called Tlachtga, from
which all the hearths in Ireland are said to have been annually
supplied.{41} In Wales the habit of lighting bonfires on the hills is
perhaps not yet extinct.{42} Within living memory when the flames were
out somebody would raise the cry, "May the tailless black sow seize the
hindmost," and everyone present would run for his life.{43} This may
point to a former human sacrifice, possibly of a victim laden with the
accumulated evils of the past year.{44}

In North Wales, according to another account, each family used to make a
great bonfire in a conspicuous place near the house. Every person threw
into the ashes a white stone, marked; the stones were searched for in the
morning, and if any one were missing the person who had thrown it in
would die, it was believed, during the year.{45} The same belief and
practice were found at Callander in Perthshire.{46}

Though, probably, the Hallowe'en fire rites had originally some
connection with the sun, the conscious intention of those who practised
them in modern times was often to ward off witchcraft. With this object
in one place the master of the family used to carry a bunch of burning
straw about the corn, in Scotland the red end of a fiery stick was waved
in the air, in Lancashire a lighted candle was borne about the fells, and
in the Isle of Man fires were kindled.{47}

GUY FAWKES DAY.

Probably the burning of Guy Fawkes on November 5 is a survival of a New
Year bonfire. There is every reason to think that the commemoration of
the deliverance from "gunpowder |199| treason and plot" is but a modern
meaning attached to an ancient traditional practice, for the burning of
the effigy has many parallels in folk-custom. Dr. Frazer{48} regards
such effigies as representatives of the spirit of vegetation--by burning
them in a fire that represented the sun men thought they secured sunshine
for trees and crops. Later, when the ideas on which the custom was based
had faded away, people came to identify these images with persons whom
they rega