buffoonery without special significance. Contributions are levied from
the public, and enforced by the "mapper," by which they are seized and
held until they have paid. The fool also has a besom, which he dips in
the gutter, and with which he sprinkles the recalcitrant.

But among much that is mere horseplay, and common to all popular
celebrations which have no religious significance to keep in check a
natural holiday exuberance, we can discover two distinct traditions.
The one is the actual Guy Fawkes celebration of the capture of the
rebel and outlaw Shane O'Neill; the other is much older, going back
into the remote past of unwritten history, and connected with those
strange religious ceremonies which a study of comparative religions has
shown us to be a natural development of the mind of primitive peoples,
struggling out of the darkness of mere barbarism. Over and over again
we find, among the customs of savage tribes, or behind the elaborate
ceremonial of such civilized nations as the Greeks and Romans, or
lingering in strange and now meaningless ceremonies such as the one I
have just described, this primitive idea of the individual who is
harmful to the community. From being baleful he became sacred. They
cast him out of their city, as the Jews did their scapegoat, to wander
in desert places, and as the Greeks did in a city festival which was
older than the Homeric gods among them, and which symbolized, in
classical times, the days when they had literally stoned a man and a
woman from their midst, bound, and with chaplets of flowers on their
heads and necklaces of black figs around their necks. It is recorded,
among the South Sea Islands, that a traveller once witnessed such a
sacrifice as this memorized in the classic Greek festival. Then, by a
queer but common inversion of idea, this baleful but sacred individual
is fetched back into the community, as the outcast, hidden in Lady
Wood, was brought back into Combe Martin, being beaten and reviled, and
yet keeping his sacred character as a being set apart from the rest of
men. His mask and traditional dress, his necklace of biscuit, and the
decking of the donkey with flowers and bread, all point to the
sacrificial character of this ceremony, though long ago forgotten and
become the opportunity for frolic and holiday-making.

The custom of "beating the bounds," which was familiar enough in many
country districts in the last century, is also a remains of primi