"On the wind-swept moors
and tranquil valleys I have felt, by some secret intuition, some
overwhelming tremor of the spirit, that here some desperate strife has
been waged, some primeval conflict enacted; an uncontrollable throb of
insight, that here some desperate stand was made, some barbarous
Thermopylea lost or won." —House of Quiet.
THE study of the folk
lore of Lowland Scotland reveals to us in scanty uncertain glimmers some
shadowy conception of the aboriginal inhabitants of what was in sober
truth a stern and wild Caledonia. Ancient haunts of men have numberless
tongues for those who know how to hear them speak. But it is not the
uncouth monoliths like giant mile-stones, looming forth on heights and
dark moorlands, but the place names our deluvian ancestors bequeathed to
us, which guide us to the knowledge from whence they had wandered to the
north. Those that run may not read, but those who pause, and with
careful patience clear away the dust of bygone ages, can decipher,
despite the obstructions of centuries of progress, traces which, like a
blazed trail, lead us beyond the even track of written history into the
forest primeval of Scotland's story. Amid all our vaunted complicated
civilisation is it not somewhat startling to find we, who consider
ourselves so advanced in religious knowledge, adhere to usages descended
to us frorn the sanguinary creed of our blue-woaded ancestors?
One chief and most
abiding indication of their, and consequently of our, Oriental origin,
are the relics left by these extinct races of their worship of the great
lights of heaven. Fire has had a fascination for the human species from
time immemorial. Naturally, those who were forced to dwell in the north
craved the most for warmth, but whether the blaze is lit by a
hearth-stone, or in the open under the roof of heaven, man, civilised or
savage, is allured by and gathers round a fire. The glowing flames for
the time being become the home centre. In far past ages the inhabitants
of Scotland wielded weapons of stone, but later, when the hidden metals
had been tracked to their lair, the natives learned to forge bronze
swords, the sun, moon, and stars above them were all important mystic
factors in their lives—gods to be propitiated. They had to live preying,
and being preyed upon by the four- footed people who shared the woods
with them. Their roof was a tree, and in winter they sought, like the
foxes, shelter in Mother Earth. For all their weather-hardened skins, or
robes of deer hide fastened with horn pins, they were a-cold. They
looked on the forces of nature as the smiles or frowns of a beneficent
or an angered Being. They sought to curry favour with the Power above
that gave to them light and heat. From the East they had brought along
with them their language, as well as their reverence for Baal. Fire was
his earthly symbol, and from his name Baal, Lord, and the Celtic lein,
fire, comes Beltane - a word which lingers as a beacon light in Scottish
place names. Beltane is also linked with our traditional customs,
legends, and poetry. To he nearer to their God on the mountaintops, they
built up fires to do him honour. As Solomon says, "It is a blessed thing
for the eyes to behold the sun." When the drear-nighted winter was over,
the heat of the great orb's rays were doubly welcome. We read in the Old
Testament of this worship of Baal, and the manner in which sacrifices of
men and beasts were offered to appease or pleasure him. The rites were
the same in North Britain as in Tophet, the Valley of Slaughter, when
the Lord complained they broke His law. The Druids, those all-powerful
priests who swayed the people of this country, appointed certain seasons
in which to pay their chiefmost deity homage. These days have remained
our national festivals, 1st May, Midsummer, the eve of November, and
Yuletide. Besides the white bulls slain in honour of Baal, the Men of
the Oaks decreed that a huge wicker cage in the form of a colossal
mortal should be woven, and in it were cast a holocaust of human
victims. These were not only prisoners, but the worshippers'
hearts'-blood, for parents gave their best beloved. Rude music made by
striking tightly-stretched hides deadened their dolorous cries. When
they had thus paid sanguinary homage to their god, when the lurid
flames, lit in his honour, had devoured the giant cageful of their
choicest and fairest, the assembled company held high revel, danced and
caroused, partaking of peculiarly-prepared food and drink. The foregoing
is a brief outline of how the ritual of the sun-worship of the Druids
was conducted on the high-placed rude altars on the moorlands, and by
others who lived in the old time before them.
We have to surmise much
regarding the ways of our ancient ancestors, but the first authentic
history of a nation is the history of its tongue. Mountains and rivers
still murmur the voices of a people long denationalised or extirpated,
so it happens the prehistoric race, who lived in what is now epic
Scotland, have left in place names, and also in surviving observances,
hints which enable us to grope our way back to embryo eras in our
country's chronicle.
The coming of the Romans
wrought many changes. They uprooted Druidism, for these conquerors did
exactly as was done in the East in King Josiah's time. "They broke in
pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and forbade that any man
might make his son or daughter pass through the fire to Moloch."
But the old beliefs
lingered, though the priests were scattered. Superstition is enduring,
especially when mingled with a religious creed. Dr. Jameson mentions
that an old Highlander, so lately as the end of the eighteenth century,
was in the habit of addressing the Deity under the title of " The Arch
Druid." These specified seasons for sacrifices and foul orgies of
heathen darkness held by our pagan predecessors are still holidays in
this Christian land of ours. When the thorn was white with blossom
Merrie England frolicked round the bedecked maypole. In Lowland
Scotland, however, the mode and manner of welcoming the spring-time
followed more closely customs instituted by those who placed "the grey
recumbent tombs of the dead in the desert places; standing stones on the
vacant wine-red moor."
Even from ballad history
we glean how much in vogue was the keeping of Beltane. The royal poet,
James I., pictures for us how, from far and near, the people thronged to
the May-day fair at Peebles. This carnival to hail spring was a landmark
of time for the lowland Scot even until our own day. The origin of our
saying, "Peebles for Pleasure," comes from this spring gathering. James
I., in The King's Quhair, tells how
At Beltane when ilke bodie
hownis
To Peblis to the play.
To heir the singing and the soundis
The solace suth to say."
Now in this twentieth
century, except for those who rise to wash their faces in the dew on
Mayday, Beltane has been well nigh forgotten, even among the shepherds,
who kept up this feast and its customs, for only in the latter end of
the Victorian era has it fallen into abeyance. Still many scale Arthur's
Seat on May-morning, for tradition had so imbued the citizens of
Edinburgh with the custom that they yet adhere to it. Even amid the rush
of our present-day life, we have to pause, however briefly, to recruit
when winter is past and the time of the singing of birds has come. We
feel the need of a chance to enjoy the returning strength of the sun,
although the old way of keeping Beltane, even among the conservative
rustics, has gone, and the religious rest time, "the Preachings," have
disappeared. These holydays have been superseded by the more prosaic and
scrimp Spring Holiday, a day on which the populace can go forth and see
the advent of summer. Mr. Guthrie in his Old Scottish Customs, published
in 1885, tells how he remembers the manner in which Beltane used to be
kept. "The shepherds met ere the dawn of May on some neighbouring
heights and round a trench which they cut in a huge ring. They went
through certain ceremonies, the formulary of which had been handed down
from Baal's votaries. They made a fire of wood, on which they dressed a
caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk. Each of the company brought,
besides the ingredients for making the caudle, plenty of beer and
whisky. The rites began by spilling some of the caudle on the ground by
way of libation. That done, every one took a cake of oatmeal, upon which
were raised knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed
preservers of their flocks and herds, or to some animal, the real
destroyer of them. Each person then turned his face to the fire, broke
off a knob, and throwing it over his left shoulder, said:
This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve
thou my sheep,' and so on. After this they used the same rites to the
noxious animals. 'This I give to thee, O fox; this to thee, O hooded
crow; this to thee, O eagle.' When the ceremony was over they dined on
the caudle, and after the feast was finished what was left was carefully
hidden away by two persons deputed for that purpose, but on the
following Sunday the herdsmen reassembled and finished the remains of
the former feast." Having gone through many peculiar forms of frolic and
mummery, the keepers of Beltane fed and made merry. Then lots were cast
by breaking up the oaten cakes and blacking one knob. The drawer of the
charcoaled piece from the hat was bound to leap through the blaze three
times. Those who, amid the laughter of the onlookers, sprang over the
flaring embers with as little scaith as possible would not in times past
have escaped with a bound above the burning heat, but have been devoured
by the red-tongued flames to propitiate the God of Light. It was also
customary at these gatherings for fathers to pass over the fire with
their children in their arms to ensure their offspring immunity from
ill. Milton touches on the origin of this custom in Paradise Lost:-
Though for the noise of
drums and timbrels loud
Their children's cries unheard, that passed through the fire
To his grim idol."
There is a Gaelic proverb
which speaks of being in "the jeopardy of Baal." This arose from the
practice of lighting two contingent fires and driving those to be
sacrificed between them to be consecrated before death. To be between
Baal's fire came in local parlance to much the same thing as being
between the deep sea and the devil, without hope of escape. The idea of
thus purifying the flocks by cleansing fires still dwells with us. In
parts of Perthshire in 1810 "the inhabitants collected and kindled a
fire by friction, and through the fire thus kindled they drove their
cattle in order to protect them against disease." In other parts of
Scotland the horses are herded between the two bonfires, thus still
unconsciously dedicating them to the sun. Penant, in his Tour in
Scotland, mentions seeing the hill-tops aglow in honour of Beltane, and
Mr. Napier in his book on folk lore, published in 1879, says, " Many
think the superstitions of last century died with the century, but this
is not so; and as these notions are curious and in many cases important
historical factors, I have thought it worth while to jot down what of
this folk lore has come under my observation during these last sixty
years." He mentions isolated districts where the rural people still held
to the observances of Beltane, and talked with those who recollected it
when it was more of a national feast day. All fires in Druidical times
were quenched on the last night of April. The priests on a neighbouring
hill dedicated to the solar worship, from the pyres they lit to welcome
Nay, gave to the people kindling from their sacred beacon wherewith to
relight the social watchfires on their own hearths.
Midsummer was the season
next set aside to propitiate Baal, but it fell sooner into oblivion than
the other specially-appointed feast days. The light was long in June,
the sun strong; the flocks fattened on the new luscious grass, for heat
and consequently food were plentiful. There was no need to fawn and
curry favour with a bountiful patron, so then as now, when all things
were going easily and smoothly, man took the benefit as his due and paid
small court to the Powers above. A well-known proverb shows the frailty
of human beings and the strategy of Satan:-
"When the devil was ill,
the devil a saint would be,
When the devil was well, devil a saint was he."
The coming harvest caused
some anxiety, but Midsummer Day and its never dark night and clear skies
did not lend itself to Baal worship. When the summer was over and winter
had to be faced, man bethought himself again of courting favour. The
exit of October became, and still from custom and tradition's sake
remains, a marked day. The Celtic name for this Hallowmass was Sham-in,
the fire of Baal. The Irish called it Sain-fuin - sam, summer, and fuin,
end—i.e., the end of summer. It was at this season that the Druids
usually met in the most central places of their surrounding country and
administered justice and adjusted disputes. Those who did not make their
peace were not given the brand from the consecrated fire and had a
sentence of excommunication passed on them. "Dr. Arthur Mitchell," says
an antiquarian, writing in 1867, "informs me that a few years ago he
counted within sight of a railway station in Perthshire a dozen of these
Samhain fires burning in different directions on a Hallowe'en night. On
the eve of the first day of November there were such fires kindled as on
May-day, accompanied as they continually were by sacrifices and
feastings." The name Hallowe'en for this late autumnal feast in
Christian times superseded Samhain. The Romans had a festival called
Fernalia in February, when they visited the graves of their friends and
offered up oblations. The spirits of the dead were then believed to be
free to roam in their whilom earthly haunts, and if not propitiated
would, during the ensuing year, haunt their neglectful relatives.
Eventually to cloak pagan Samhain with a semblance of Christianity, the
Church mingled the two feasts into Hallowmass. On the eve of November it
was believed the veil was lifted and a peep into futurity given.
Gradually All-Hallow observances were not held on hill-tops, but centred
round the people's own fireside, and there nuts were burnt and apples
ducked for. Apples have taken root in the superstitions of the people
may be from the day of their forbiddenness. A tree of them is said to be
lucky near a house, and apples are credited with holding a special sway
over the affairs of the affections. One common Hallowe'en custom is for
a girl to pare an apple and fling the skin over her shoulder to read
from its twists the initial letter of her lover's name. This divination
of the future by contortions and signs rose from out of the blood-bestained
smoke of Baal's fire. The oak-wreathed Druids learned to draw
conclusions as to the future by watching the writhings of their victims,
whether bull or man, under their knife, and the way they fell in their
dying agony. A less blood-thirsty age reads what is to come in apple
skins. From Hallowe'en hankerings for future insight any bold lover had
but to be alert, or have a friend to give him a hint when to appear, to
score a success. Most of the charms had to be worked out alone, some had
to be tested in a solitude of two, which gave a quick-witted youth every
opportunity of advancing his suit. There was the pulling of green kail
stocks from out of a spinster's or bachelor's garden, when a couple went
with shut eyes, hand in hand, among the cabbages. If the runts were of
goodly growth, stout of stem, all was well for the pullers. Their mates
would be well favoured in person and purse. If the roots were unclogged
with earth, they would be lacking in comeliness and poverty-stricken. If
the kernel of the stock was sweet or sour to taste, so would be the
temper of the future consort. The stocks were hung about the doors, and
the next person crossing the threshold was held to bear the name of the
future wife or husband. It was thus made easy for a lover to come in at
an opportune moment, or to persuade the lady of his choice not to fly in
the face of fate, when such opportunities as walking in the dark, with
eyes shut, hand in hand, were strewn by tradition in their path. For
instance, on this night when the future was seen face to face, maidens
ofttimes, while combing their locks, ate an apple alone at midnight,
threw one piece over their left shoulder, and while munching the rest,
they looked through their veil of hair and saw the reflection of their
ordained spouse in the mirror. There is also the old custom of the
sowing of hemp. It was also done at midnight by a lass scattering the
seed saying, "Hemp seed I sow thee, hemp seed I sow thee; and he that is
my true love come behind and harrow thee." A youth who was too
fainthearted to take advantage of such a chance was not worthy to win a
fair lady. The winnowing of corn at mirk midnight offered yet another
opportunity, also the measuring of the beanstalk. The order in regard to
the latter spell was to go three times round a beanstalk with
outstretched arms, as if measuring it, and the third time the votary
will clasp in her arms the shade of her future partner. It is easy to
see how the shadow with a little tact might become substance.
Throwing the clue was
another forecast practised. The receipt for this augury was: "Steal
forth alone at night to the nearest lime kiln, and throw in a clue of
blue yarn, winding off in a fresh clue, as you come near the edge, grasp
hold of the thread lying in the kiln. You then ask who holds, and the
name of your future partner will be uttered from beneath." Mr. Guthrie,
in his Old Scottish Customs, tells us of a girl called Mary Shirley, who
had two admirers, Robert Laurie and William Fleming. Laurie was the
favoured one. Fleming consulted a friend of Mary's, and found from her
that Mary Shirley intended on the coming Hallowe'en to throw the blue
clue into the kiln nearest her father's house. Fleming obeyed the hint
thus kindly given. On the night in question he hid himself in the lime
kiln and seized hold of the clue which the inquiring lass threw in. In
answering to her faltering "Who holds?" he gave his own name. Hastily
dropping the thread, the terrified girl fled homewards. Ere many hours
had elapsed Fleming proposed and was accepted by the pretty Mary, to the
no small surprise and anger of his rival. When congratulated on the
wisdom of her choice, she replied somewhat sadly: It was na me who made
the choice; I myself was a' for Robert, but fate had it I was tae get
the ither, and wha can gang agin fate? " The marriage thus strangely
brought about proved a very happy one for both parties. Fleming,
however, wisely preserved silence as to the Hallowe'en trick which won
him his bride." There were many other observances, all with much the
same object, tried with merriment on the eve of November, when people
believed the borderland between the visible and invisible world was for
a brief space free to dead and living. There was the pricking of an egg,
the eating of a herring, the dipping of a shirt-sleeve, etc., each
giving golden opportunities to help the prophecy to be realised.
At Ruthergien there long
lingered peculiar ceremonies as to the baking of sour cakes on St.
Luke's Day. This unique baking was supposed to have originated in pagan
times,—the meaning thereof is swallowed up in the darkness of ages. The
baking was executed by women who began their work at sunset. They sat
within a chalked line, whose bounds were never overstepped by the
audience as it was looked upon as consecrated ground. One dame was the
toaster or queen, the helpers were her maidens. The dough was prepared
beforehand and rolled up into balls mixed with sugar and aniseed. The
women's hands never touched the dough; she who sat next the fire towards
the east was called the Toddler, her companion on the other side was
called the Hoddler, who took a ball, formed it into a small cake and
then cast it on the bake- board of the Hoddler, who beat it out a little
thinner. This being done, she in her turn threw it on the board of her
neighbour, and thus it vent round from east to west, in the direction of
the sun's course. When it came to the toaster it was as thin as a piece
of paper. Sometimes the cake was so emaciated as to be carried by the
air up the chimney. The bread thus baked was never originally intended
for human food. In later days it was always given to strangers. The
origin of this custom is said to be very ancient, and it is thought by
some to have belonged to the worship of the moon, for cakes were kneaded
by women for the Queen of Heaven. This baking has fallen into abeyance,
but for long at Rutherglen sour cakes and salt roasts were prepared for
provisions at the time of St. Luke's Fair. Those who are inquisitive as
to what had been, can only guess that near to the time of Hallowe'en in
pagan times the moon came in for her share of homage. As the spouse of
the sun she was held sacred, and Venus was the page to these leading
luminaries. The rainbow and the lightning were the sun's servants.
Astoreth or Astarte was the name of the moon god, the sun's fair silvery
consort, and to this day from ingrained superstition we look for the
Lady Moon when she appears but a silver bow in the heavens. For luck's
sake we turn our money in our pockets, kiss our hands, or bow to her
three times. Job (xxxi. 26) speaks of the worship of this goddess as of
some ill religion, the observance of which has descended to us. If I
beheld the sun when it shined or the moon walking in brightness and my
heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this
also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge for I should have
denied the God that is above."
O Lady Moon—whose horns
point to the east,
Grow be increased.
O Lady Moon—whose horns point to the west,
Wane be at rest!
says an olden rhyme. Thus
everlastingly fair Lady Moon has been saluted when her silvery horns are
first seen. She has waned and gone to rest for untold ages, for millions
of moons, and still, till lately, here among us cakes were baked by her
woman votaries, still she entices us by her monthly newborn beauty to
make obeisance to her. As for the eve of All Souls, the ancient Sambain,
when graves give up their dead, and for a space the spirits of good and
evil have special licence to return to this world, it will never be
forgotten as long as Burns is read, for his imagery of the revel of the
witches by Alloway Kirk has made it immortal.
When the days had begun
to lengthen the Druids instituted the festival of Yuletide, to hail the
slowly-increasing light. The northern nations, like the Hebrews, to use
an Irishism, began their day in the evening. They counted time by
nights. That was an all-important period, for their sacred fires (which
they looked upon as the earthly symbol of the sun) loomed the better
against the mirk of the dark hours. The conviviality on the threshold of
a new year we still adhere to. In one of our ballads we read of the
hallowed days of Yule, for the time of feasting lasted longer than one
scrimp day. When people had gathered together from afar, they enjoyed a
week or more of social intercourse, as when in James the First's time
they "bounded" to "Peebles to the play." Yule and New Year came to be
merged as one festival. In Christian times in England, the feast of the
Nativity remained the principal holiday, but in Lowland Scotland
Hogmanay and the first week of January were the " hallowed days of
Yule." Also no doubt owing to the persevering efforts made by the
Presbyterian clergy after the Reformation to extinguish all Catholic
holydays, Christmas was not regarded north of the Tweed. The last of
December, Hogmanay as it was called in Scotland, was looked upon by the
children as a period when beggary was justifiable. The foreseeing
housewife prepared for the besieging of her door by demanding bairns,
and baked Hogmanay cakes. She good-naturedly obeyed the injunctions sung
before her house:-
"Get up, good wife, and
shake your feathers,
Dinna think that we are beggars;
For we are bairns come out to play,
Get up and gie's our hogmanay."
In England the people in
Christian times learned to sing Christmas carols, but in Scotland, the
boys who were guisards sang, or rather hastily, with sing-song voices,
gabbled, rhymes, whose meaning is lost in conjecture:-
".....Hogmanay,
Give us of your white bread, and none of your grey."
was one favourite jingle
cried by the guisars. To the middle of last century, in outlying
primitive districts, at the close of the year, children dressed
themselves in sheets, which they folded so as to form an ample pocket
like a fishwife's petticoat, to hold their dole. Then they went from
door to door, laughing and singing their Yuletide rhymes:-
"My feet's cauld, my
shoon's done,
Gie 's my cakes, and let's rin."
the sheeted blackmailers
cried, when they had got their pockets full. Mr. Chambers in his Popular
Rhymes of Scotland, published in 1841, says: "It is no unpleasing scene
(I am sorry to say I speak of sixty years since) to see the children
going laden home, each with his large apron bellying out before him,
filled full of cakes, perhaps scarcely able to waddle beneath the load.
Such a mass of oaten alms is no inconsiderable addition to the comfort
of the poor man's household, and tends to make the season still more
worthy of its jocund title."
Auguries as to the future
were drawn from Yuletide bakings. The farmers' wives in Forfarshire
kneaded bannocks at this season. If they fell asunder after being put to
the fire, it was an omen that they would not bake again on the eve of
Yule. Hansel-Monday followed the New Year, for Scotland has two special
holidays of her own—Hogmanay and Hansel-Monday—which she does not share
with her southern sister, England. She leaves to the latter Christmas
and Boxing Day. Hansel-Monday is the first Monday of the week after New
Year, when presents were given in tokens as a symbol of peace and
goodwill, and Hansel-Monday, as every householder knows, is still a day
when those who serve us during the year expect a largesse. In olden
times, not only to children and servants were hansels given, but to all
the stalled beasts. The farmer went round and laid in each manger an
extra feed. Burns alludes to the kindly custom when the master pats his
steady steed and says:-
"Gude New Year I wish
thee, Maggie,
Hae, there's a nip to thy auld baggie."
Every house was set in
order and work ceased on Hogmanay. Yarn was hanked and wheel and reel
put by. Yule, when the days were brief, was a convenient season to
gather round the hearth and burn the Yule log, which was usually of ash.
The holiday was lengthened out in the company of bewitching mead and
heather ale, and all the Scandinavians kept the Yuletide by their own
hearths. Hogmanay, though seemingly Scotch, is said to be of French
derivation from au gui menez, " to the mistletoe go," which mummers
formerly cried in France at Christmas. Another suggested explanation is
au geux mencz, that is, "bring to the beggars." There are others who
hold that Hogmanay comes from a word meaning "the night of slaughter."
That derivation of the word recalls the olden days when the cattle were
killed in preparation for the feast of Baal. The mistletoe has grown
into the flower symbolic of Yuletide. It is a true evergreen, for it
reminds us still of the days when the Druids held sway over our pagan
land. Whatever be the derivation of Hogmanay, it holds its own in
Scotland. Dark men are popular on the dawn of the first of January. The
first person to enter a house on the New Year should be black-haired,
not a red or fair man, and a woman is unwelcome. Many devices are
resorted to to secure a lucky first- foot, so that the house may
prosper. The wine of the country is in much requisition on Hogmanay. It
is given and taken by the first-foots. Still in the stubborn Scotch
mind, despite centuries of advancement, there remains fixed the idea
that the days of Yule should be holiday times. They extend, as in
prehistoric years, for weilnigh a week, and there is a pardon given for
the noisy carousing on the occasion. Even in this bustling age people
find it takes a few days to wish a good New Year to all their friends.
The Druids' practice to keep a watch on the night that the old year dies
remains with us. Crowds eagerly hearken for the church bells to ring out
the old, to ring in the new, and there is not much time given for that
"solemn pause thinking over the year that's awa'," of which Sir Walter
Scott speaks in his journal.
To sum up some of the
customs which folk lore from ages past has bequeathed to us, and which,
though in a modified form, we unconsciously adhere to, the Druids
instilled into their devotees a patriotism which made them strive to die
"....... facing fearful
odds,
For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods.''
This habit of
self-sacrifice, our recent wars can testify, is not yet extinct. The
Druid priests were astrologers of no mean repute; waiting by their altar
fires they studied the starry firmament. From them, as we have
mentioned, we learned to calculate time by senights and fortnights
instead of by the days of the month. They too left us the mistletoe as a
plant sacred to Yule. They had gone forth to cut it with the silver
knife in their oak groves to lay upon their altar. It is now entwined
with holly leaves and is enshrined in our hearths and homes, as a sign
that Christmas is near. Their manner of homage reeked with blood, but
they gave to their deity their best and most precious lives without
stint. "Thine ancient sacrifice a humble and a contrite heart" we have
been taught is sufficient offering, but simple sacrifice though it be,
we ofttimes let the seasons roll by without tendering it. Standing by
some lichen-covered pagan altar we think of the victims, biped and
quadruped, who were once slaughtered there to appease the heathen gods,
and see that the grass grows green around the spot once saturated with
hot life's blood. Yet though Christianity had shone in the land for
hundreds of years, the belief that a life given would mollify the powers
that be still glimmered among us. Not twenty miles west from the capital
of Scotland, my father, Sir James Y. Simpson, to whose genius and
benevolence the world owes the blessings derived from the use of
chloroform, mentions in one of his arch,-,ological essays, " In old
pagan times we know that the sacrifice of the ox was common. I have
myself often listened to the account given by one near and dear to me
who was in early life personally engaged in the offering up and burying
of a poor live cow as a sacrifice to the spirit of Murrain." The one "
near and dear " was the future doctor's father. The cow was immured at
his grandfather's farm, and Sir James's father used to graphically
describe to his eager son how he and his brothers propelled the poor
victim into its grave, and "I remember," he added, with grisly
graphicness, "seeing the earth heaving after the soil was pushed in."
This was some time in one of the latter decades of the eighteenth
century, and the owner of the cow, Alexander Simpson, of Slackend,
farmer and farrier, was a man full of practical common sense. He was so
shrewd and pawky it is likely the wretched animal thus buried to allay
the plague was on its last legs before it was thus cruelly immured
alive; for he also laid aside a corner of a field as an offering to the
Evil One—a corner called the Gudeman's croft—and this bit was a stony,
useless kiiowe. The plough left it unbroken, and it was supposed to be
appreciated by the so-called Gudeman. Throughout Scotland these "crofts"
may be seen.
When a ship is named and
launched we speed it on its way, breaking a bottle of red vine over it.
This is a relic of that heathen time when great events were baptised
with blood. The new vessel on her passage into the sea would have had
her way paved with the bodies of prisoners and slaves which she would
have juggernauted amid the acclamations of the delighted crowd.
We learned to rear
monuments from those far- off ancestors of ours. Those unwieldy stones
they raised on bare heights had been placed there with what almost seems
superhuman effort, unaided by any mechanical device. They had no roads
to drag their memorials along, no tackle to upheave them into their
places - these great slabs of rock, which never knew the smoothing
influence of a mason's tools. But the people carved upon them
incomprehensible circular hieroglyphics which we cannot read. They
engraved these pillars of rock with patient labour, for their implements
like their monuments were of stone. Our more practical humane age,
instead of placing monoliths on high to bear some great name in
remembrance, builds with its gold hospitals and schools for the sick and
needy. These rugged, be-lichened obelisks with their strange markings
were installed in their places amid the sacrifices and shouts of the
worshipping heathen. They have withstood the storms of untold centuries,
and standing there in their natural, unhewn, rugged grandeur, tell us
how we learned to commemorate outstanding deeds and deaths, for from
them we were taught to thus write in stone. The names of some of our
Scottish hill-tops show to us where our forefathers worshipped, and we
read in them our country's story. They are to us rays of light on
sun-worship; for instance, Tullie Beltane is the knoll of Baal's fire,
and in the statistical account of Scotland, 1848, it is stated that a
thick stratum of charcoal was discovered beneath a structure of fine
loam on the summit of the hill. When the country people saw it, they
expressed no surprise, as the tradition was familiar to them that it was
here where the former inhabitants of the country had been in the habit
of lighting their Beltane fires. There is a peak in the Cheviots,
Yalverton Bell, and these names (for the word Bal or Bell is given to
many a knoll), tell where of old the fires were lit, and where the
pagans worshipped, and these names telegraph back to us over mighty
distances of time significant specimens of the tongue spoken by the
first inhabitants of the districts. In the Celtic other names alluding
to fire are beacon lights to the archeologist, such as Ard-Andein, the
light of the fire; Craig-an-tein, the rock of the fire; Auch-an-tein,
the field of the fire. There are besides Stonehenge other remains of
pagan temples left in this land; they, too, like the great menhirs of
Salisbury Plains, were almanacs in stone. The priests knew by the slant
of the sun on its rising or setting what time of the year it was. At
Craig-Iaddi there are slabs of rock which form a rude altar, one laid
table-wise resting on the other two. The name of the Cromlech itself
speaks, Craig-Maddi, the rock of God. There, on the solitary moorland,
unmistakable history is written, for no one can look at this huge
memorial without recognising at once an altar of the hoary past.
Greenach in Perthshire, where there is a large stone circle, means field
of the sun; Greanchnox means the knoll of the sun. The latter place is
now our great seaport on the Clyde, Greenock. There is also Greenan, a
river in Perthshire—river of the sun; and there is a Balgreen, meaning
the town of the sun. Near to Edinburgh is its harbour, Granton, and in
its name is written the fact that ages before Edwin built a burgh on the
great rock which had been a Roman fort, and founded high Dunedin, our
city of the winds, the Druids had worshipped on this hillock by the sea.
The knoll which caught the gleam of the rising or the setting sun is now
a villa-laden steep, but here the priests of Baal had stood and watched,
and worshipped and walked amid the Stones of Fire centuries before
Edinburgh began to emerge from a fortress into a be-castled romance of
stone and lime.
Fire was the alarm signal
in troubled times, for it sped the news of coming war. The empty
braziers on the peel towers of the Borders were once kept charged to be
aye ready to be lighted and let their neighbours know that the English
had crossed the Tweed. Fire carried the news of the coming of the Armada
from south to north with wonderful despatch. The alarm at Plymouth lit
the first link in the chain of fire which blazed from hill to hill till
"the glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle." Braziers made an
effectual line of telegraph in our land. They were in use till last
century, for they were used when it was thought Napoleon was likely to
invade our isle. The false alarm lit one day made the bold borders make
ready with zeal and promptitude. The very bonfires which we light in
times of rejoicing are a link with the eras when the sun-worshippers
liked to look down from their blazing heights and call, as did the
priest whom Elijah challenged on Carmel, "O Baal, hear us." Their love
of flames is not extinguished yet in us, their descendants. The gory
trace of the sun-cult's fires, like the bloodstains on woodwork, is
indelible. We worship a known God, but when we wish to return thanks for
blessings received, we toilsomely ascend, laden with burdens of fuel, to
conspicuous heights, and there build bonfires and frolic around the
flames, pleased that our Tight should so shine before men; as when every
peak from Land's End to John o' Groat's was aglow with our fires of
homage to a great Queen, who, victorious and glorious, had ruled over us
for sixty years. We rejoiced and made merry, forgetful that, despite the
lapse of ages, we adhered to the practice learned by our ancestors from
the priests of Baal. |
