Note 567 — Chapter IV
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Footnote 567
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In Eastern Europe to this day the great season for driving out the cattle to pasture for the first time in spring is St. George's Day, the twenty-third of April, which is not far removed from May Day. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 324 sqq. As to the bisection of the Celtic year, see the old authority quoted by P.W. Joyce, The Social History of Ancient Ireland (London, 1903), ii. 390: "The whole year was [originally] divided into two parts—Summer from 1st May to 1st November, and Winter from 1st November to 1st May." On this subject compare (Sir) John Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 460, 514 sqq.; id., Celtic Folk-lore, Welsh and Manx (Oxford, 1901), i. 315 sqq.; J.A. MacCulloch, in Dr. James Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. (Edinburgh, 1910) p. 80.