cynicism, to assert that life is really made up of nothing more than dinners, cigars, billiards, money, position, fame, titles, and high-stepping horses. Everybody at your club firmly possesses this faith, and sneers sublimely at all who reject it. But if we could transport one of these easy cynics to a tropical town, if we could set him to work all day at an office, and in the evening drive him out, high-stepping horses, footman, and all, through a row of wretched mud hovels, into a brown and burnt-up plain, with no green grass to delight the eye, no signs of human prosperity to gladden the sympathetic heart; if we could take him back again to a bookless house, and turn him out alone upon the verandah to smoke his solitary weed, unsolaced by the Saturday or the Globe;' if we could keep him for twelve months in this purposeless life, without music, art, science, congenial talk-even though cynical-if we could do all this, believe me, our friend would return to his club at last, a gladder and a wiser man, ready to own that the Academy and the Royal Society have their advantages, that South Kensington and the British Museum are something other than an egregious bore, and that the power to take a country walk over the green, rolling downs, commanding a view into some pleasant English combe, with its Norman church-tower and its Elizabethan manor-house, forms just as appreciable an element in his happiness as the addition of an extra hundred to his income or his salary. These are the things which we miss in the tropics, and for which no adventitious advantages of mere money payment can ever compensate us. The years spent between those self-same imaginary parallels on our terrestrial globe I count as just so much dead loss of time cut away from one's allotted span.

And now, as the preachers say-I feel as though I had been gradually dropping into the didactic strain of a sermon-I have done my best to expose, so far as in me lay, the true nature of the Great Tropical Fallacy. I may, perhaps, have drawn my picture rather too grimly from the other side, but where an exaggerated view prevails, exaggeration in the opposite direction can alone redress the balance of truth. It is useless to fight a popular belief with gentle language; a good hearty denunciation is needed to impress the speaker's conviction. Besides, in the case of the tropics, I feel strongly on personal grounds. I have myself been deceived and played upon; I have read the late Canon Kingsley's rhapsodies and marvelled over the exquisite word-painting of Bernardin de St. Pierre. But now I come out like the countryman at the fair, who pays his penny to behold the Wonderful Sea Serpent, and is introduced to a tame seal in a tub of water. Under such circumstances, some countrymen and some wayfarers, for very

shame, keep up the wicked delusion, lest bystanders should mock at their credulity; but for my part, I prefer to take my stand at the door of the tent, and warn all and sundry that this Tropical Show is a gigantic and unconscionable Sham.

J. ARBUTHNOT WILSON.

A Love-Strife.

I.

I WONDER Whether I love her;

I wonder whether I hate.

Now she will coo like a milk-white dove,
All love;

Now she stands like a queen apart,

Crowned with beauty: but, has she a heart?

O could I only discover

Whether I love or hate,

Then should I know my fate.

11.

I wonder if for a minute

She thinks of me when away;
If she deems me a trivial toy,
Mere boy :

Yes, I can fancy, yes, I can see
Rosy red lips that laugh at me.
O love's strife! I'll begin it:
Throwing all fear away,
I'll know my fate this day.

MORTIMER COLLINS.

426

Beltane.

At Beltane game

Thou ledst the dance with Malcolm Græme.-Lady of the Lake.

LONG after the Druids were no more, and when Christianity had become established in Britain, many of the superstitions connected with the old fire-worship lingered among the people. So tenaciously did they cling to these old rites, that it is probable the early Christian priesthood made a virtue of necessity, and grafted on to the ceremonial of their faith modified forms of the old customs, endeared to their converts by life-long observance. To this day, in some places, we find curious remains of these ancient rites in usages which the people, though ignorant of their origin and meaning, still periodically observe. No clearer link of this kind between present and remote past exists than the observances of La Bealtuinn, or Beltane, as practised in Scotland till within the recollection of living people, and which, indeed, are not yet wholly extinct in remote districts.

In the days of the Druids, the first of May was the great festival in honour of Belus or Baal. From the sacred fires on the altars, mighty fires were lighted on the hill-tops, through which were driven all the four-footed beasts of the district. The cattle were merely driven through, not sacrificed, and the object of the ceremony was partly to expiate the sins of the people, but chiefly to keep away from the herds all disorders till next May-day. On this day, too, all the hearth fires in the district were extinguished, in order that they might be re-kindled from this purifying flame.

From these circumstances, this day was called 'Beil-teine,' the day of Belus' fire. As lately as 1790, we know that in the West of Scotland the cow-herds and young people in the country districts used to kindle these fires on the high grounds, in honour of Beltane ; while in many other parts of the country we find observances that, even more clearly still, point to the rites of the sun-god's worship. Several of the clerical contributions to Sir John Sinclair's 'Statistical Account of Scotland,' published at the end of last century, allude to the Beltane usages in their parishes; but the most detailed account is that given by the Rev. James Robertson, the minister of the parish of Callander, in Perthshire, who, writing in 1791, says: The people of this district have two customs, which are fast wearing out, not only here but all over the Highlands, and therefore ought to be taken notice of while they remain. Upon

the first of May, which is called Beltane or Baltein day, all the boys in a township or hamlet meet on the moors. They cut a table in the green sod of a round figure, by casting a trench in the ground of such circumference as to hold the whole company. They kindle a fire, and dress a repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the company. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal until it be perfectly black. They then put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Everyone, blindfold, draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit; whoever draws the black bit is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore in rendering the year productive of the sustenance of man and beast. There is little doubt of these inhuman sacrifices having been once offered in this country as well as in the East, although they now pass from the act of sacrifice, and only compel the devoted person to leap three times through the flames, with which act the ceremonies of this festival are closed.'

While it is clear that some of these rites are peculiarly like those of sun-worship, others suggest the Roman Palilia, or festival in honour of Pales, the goddess of shepherds. Below we shall see that in the Beltane usages there are suggestions of the Floralia, or festival in honour of the goddess of flowers, remains of which are so conspicuous in the less primitive May-day observances of England; also that another Roman festival, the Lemuria, contributed to the strange medley of pagan rites grafted on to the pliant Christianity of the second-century Briton.

Ovid, in the fourth book of the Fasti, tells how the shepherds, in order to get the protection of Pales for themselves and their flocks, kindled fires in the fields, baked cakes, purified themselves by leaping through the flames; while, for the caudle of the Perthshire peasants, they drank milk and sapa, that is, new wine boiled till only a third part of it remained.

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Pennant, in his Tour in Scotland,' gives an account of the Beltane rites in which some additional particulars are noted:-' On the first of May,' he says, 'the herdsmen of every village hold their Beltein, a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on the ground leaving the turf in the middle, on that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk, and bring, besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky, for each of the company must contribute some

6

thing. The rites begin with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation; on that, everyone takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them; each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob, and, flinging it over his shoulders, says: "This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; " and, so on. After that they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: "This I give to thee, O fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow! this to thee, O eagle!" &c.

'When the ceremony is over, they dine on the caudle, and after the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed for that purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble and finish the relics of the first entertainment.'

There is a place in Perthshire on the borders of the Highlands which is called Tulliebeltane, that is, the eminence, or rising ground of the fire of Belus. In the neighbourhood,' says Dr. Jamieson in his Scottish Dictionary, ' is a Druidical temple of eight upright stones, where it is supposed the fire was kindled. At some distance from this is another temple of the same kind, but smaller, and near it a well, still held in great veneration. On Beltane morning, superstitious people go to this well and drink of it; then they make a procession round it nine times. After this they in like manner go round the temple.'

Nine was the sacred number in Druidical times, hence the number of turns here, and the number of knobs on the Beltane cakes. The Celtic veneration for the sun appears, too, in the way the pilgrims to the well would go round it. All would follow the course of the sun, 'deas-iuil,' the lucky way, while the opposite is 'tuath-iuil,' or the way that would make their pilgrimage bring misfortune to them. "When a Highlander goes to drink water out of a consecrated fountain,' says Mr. Robertson, he must approach by going round the place from east to west on the south side. So when the dead are laid in the grave, so when the bride is brought to her future husband before the minister; so a bottie goes round a company, &c.'

The proximity of dates caused many of these May-day rites to be transferred to Rude-day-which, indeed, is called Beltane several times in old writers, as well as by its Christian name of The Invention of the Cross.' There is a quotation in Jamieson's Dictionary from Bellenden's Chronicle that shows this very well: 'On Beltane day, in the yeir nixt following, callit the Inventioun of the haly Croce, James Stewart, the third son of Luke Moido