The next great day in the pagan calendar of the Celts is called in Manx Laa Lhunys, in Irish Lugnassad, the assembly or fair, which was associated with the name of the god Lug. This should correspond to Lammas, but, reckoned as it is according to the Old Style, it falls on the twelfth of August, which used to be a great day for business fairs in the Isle of Man as in Wales. But for holiday making the twelfth only suited when it happened to be a Sunday: when that was not the case, the first Sunday after the twelfth was fixed upon. It is known, accordingly, as the first Sunday of Harvest, and it used to be celebrated by crowds of people visiting the tops of the mountains. The kind of interference to which I have alluded with regard to an ancient holiday, is one of the regular results of the transition from Roman Catholicism to a Protestant system with only one fixed holiday, namely, Sunday. The same shifting has partly happened in Wales, where Lammas is Gwyl Awst, or the festival of Augustus, since the birthday of Augustus, auspiciously for him and the celebrity of his day, fell in with the great day of the god Lug in the Celtic world. Now the day for going up the Fan Fach mountain in Carmarthenshire was Lam; mas, but under a Protestant Church it became the first Sunday in August; and even modified in that way it could not long survive under a vigorous sabbatarian régime either in Wales or Man. As to the latter in particular, I have heard it related by persons who were present, how the crowds on the top of South Barrule on the first Sunday of Harvest were denounced as pagans by a preacher called William Gick, some seventy years ago; and how another man called Paric Beg, or Little Patrick, preaching to the crowds on Snaefell in milder terms, used to wind up the service with a collection, which appears to have proved a speedier method

of reducing the dimensions of these meetings on the mountain tops. Be that as it may, they seem to have dwindled since then to comparative insignificance.

If you ask the reason for this custom now, for it is not yet quite extinct, you are told, first, that it is merely to gather ling berries; but now and then a quasi-religious reason is given, namely, that it is the day on which Jephthah's daughter went forth to bewail her virginity 'upon the mountains': somehow some Manx people make believe that they are doing likewise. That is not all, for people who have never themselves thought of going up the mountains on the first Sunday of harvest or any other, will be found devoutly reading at home about Jephthah's daughter on that day. I was told this first in the south by a clergyman's wife, who, finding a woman in the parish reading the chapter in question on that day, asked the reason for her fixing on that particular portion of the Bible. She then had the Manx view of the matter fully explained to her, and she has since found more information about it, and so have I. It is needless for me to say that I do not quite understand how Jephthah's daughter came to be introduced: perhaps it is vain to look for any deeper reason than that the mention of the mountains may have served as a sort of catch-word, and that as the Manx people began to cease from visiting the tops of the mountains annually, it struck the women as the next best thing for them to read at home of one who did 'go up and down upon the mountains': they are great readers of the Bible generally. In any case we have here a very curious instance of a practice, originally pagan, modifying itself profoundly to secure a new lease of life.

Between May-day and November eve, there was a day of considerable importance in the island; but the fixing on it was probably due to influence other than

Celtic: I mean Midsummer Eve, or St. John's. However, some practices connected with it would seem to have been of Celtic origin, such as 'the bearing of rushes to certain places called Warrefield and Mame on Midsummer Even.' Warrefield was made in Manx into Barrule, but Mame, 'the jugum, or ridge,' has not been identified. The Barrule here in question was South Barrule, and it is to the top of that mountain the green rushes were carried, according to Manx tradition, as the only rent or tax which the inhabitants paid, namely, to Manannán mac Lir (called in Welsh Manawydan ab Lyr), whom the same tradition treats as father and founder, as king and chief wizard of the Isle of Man, the same Manannán who is quaintly referred to in the illiterate passage at the head of this chapter1. As already stated, the payment of the annual rent of rushes is associated with Midsummer Eve; but it did not prevent the top of South Barrule from being visited likewise later in the year. Perhaps it may also be worth while mentioning, with regard to most of the mountains climbed on the first Sunday of Harvest, that they seem to have near the summit of each a well of some celebrity, which appears to be the goal of the visitors' peregrinations. This is the case with South Barrule, the spring near the top of which cannot, it is said, be found when sought a second time; also with Snaefell and with Maughold Head, which boasts one of the most famous springs in the island. When I visited it last summer in company with Mr. Kermode, we found it to contain a considerable number of pins, some of which were bent, and many buttons. Some of the pins were not of a kind usually carried by men, and most of the buttons decidedly belonged to the dress of the other sex.

1 Quoted from Oliver's Monumenta de Insula Manniæ, vol. i. (Manx Society, vol. iv) p. 84: see also Cumming's Isle of Man, p. 258.

Several people who had resorted many years ago to St. Maughold's Well, told me that the water is good for sore eyes, and that after using it on the spot, or filling a bottle with it to take home, one was wont to drop a pin or bead or button into the well. But it had its full virtue only when visited the first Sunday of Harvest, and that only during the hour when the books were open at church, which, shifted back to Roman Catholic times, means doubtless the hour when the priest was engaged in saying Mass. Compare the passage in the Mabinogi of Math, where it is said that the spear required for the slaying of ILew ILawgyffes had to be a whole year in the making: the work was to be pursued only so long as one was engaged at the sacrifice on Sunday (ar yr aberth dub sul): see the Oxford Mabinogion, p. 76. To return to Man, the restriction, as might be expected, is not peculiar to St. Maughold's Well: I have heard of it in connexion with other wells, such as Chibbyr Lansh in Lezayre parish, and with a well on Slieau Maggyl, in which some Kirk Michael people have a great belief. But even sea water was believed to have considerable virtues if you washed in it while the books were open at church, as I was told by a woman who had many years ago repeatedly taken her own sister to divers wells and to the sea during the service on Sunday, in order to have her eyes cured of a chronic weakness.

The remaining great day in the Celtic year is called Sauin or Laa Houney: in Irish, Samhain, genitive Samhna. The Manx call it in English Hollantide, a word derived from the English All hallowen tide, 'the Season of All Saints'.' This day is also reckoned in Man according to the Old Style, so that it is our twelfth of November. That is the day when 1 See the New English Dictionary, s. v. 'Allhallows.'

the tenure of land terminates, and when servant men go to their places. In other words, it is the beginning of a new year; and Kelly, in his Manx-English Dictionary, has, under the word blein, 'year,' the following note:-'Vallancey says the Celts began their year with January; yet in the Isle of Man the first of November is called New Year's day by the Mummers, who, on the eve, begin their petition in these words: To-night is New Year's night, Hog-unnaa1, &c.' It is a pity that Kelly, whilst he was on this subject, did not give the rhyme in Manx, and all the more so, as the mummers of the present day, if he is right, must have changed their words into Noght oie Houney, that is to say, To-night is Sauin Night or Halloween. So I had despaired of finding anybody who could corroborate Kelly in his statement, when I happened last summ to find a man at Kirk Michael who was quite familiar with this way of treating the year. I asked him if he could explain Kelly's absurd statement-I put my question designedly in that form. He said he could, but that there was nothing absurd in it. He then told me how he had heard some old people talk of it he is himself now about sixty-seven. He had been a farm servant from the age of sixteen till he was twenty-six to the same man, near Regaby, in the parish of Andreas, and he remembers his master and a near neighbour of his discussing the term New Year's Day as applied to the first of November, and explaining to the younger men that it had always been so in old times. In fact, it seemed to him natural enough, as all

This comes near the pronunciation usual in Roxburghshire and the south of Scotland generally, which is, as Dr. Murray informs me, Hunganay without the m occurring in the other forms to be mentioned presently. But so far as I have been able to find, the Manx pronunciation is now Hob dy naa, which I have heard in the north, while Hob ju naa is the prevalent form in the south.