Note 13 — Chapter IV · Manx Folklore

The man who told me this, on being asked whether he had ever heard of cattle being driven through fire or between two fires on May-day, replied that it was not known to him as a Manx custom, but that it was an Irish one. A cattle-dealer whom he named used on May-day to drive his cattle through fire so as to singe them a little, as he believed that would preserve them from harm. He was an Irishman, who came to the island for many years, and whose children are settled in the island now. On my asking him if he knew whence the dealer came, he answered, ‘From the mountains over there,’ pointing to the Mourne Mountains looming faintly in the mists on the western horizon. The Irish custom known to my Manx informant is interesting both as throwing light on the Manx custom, and as being the continuation of a very ancient rite mentioned by Cormac. That writer, or somebody in his name, says that belltaine, May-day, was so called from the ‘lucky fire,’ or the ‘two fires,’ which the druids of Erin used to make on that day with great incantations; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to those fires, or to be driven between them, as a safeguard against the diseases of the year. Cormac13 says nothing, it will be noticed, as to one of the cattle or the sheep being sacrificed for the sake of prosperity to the rest. However, Scottish14 May-day customs point to a sacrifice having been once usual, and that possibly of human beings, and not of sheep as in the Isle of Man. I have elsewhere15 tried to equate these Celtic May-day practices with the Thargelia16 of the Athenians of antiquity. The Thargelia were characterized by peculiar rites, and among other things then done, two adult persons were led about, as it were scapegoats, and at the end they were sacrificed and burnt, so that their ashes might be dispersed. Here we seem to be on the track of a very ancient Aryan practice, although the Celtic season does not quite coincide with the Greek one. Several items of importance for comparison here will be found passed under careful review in a most suggestive paper by Mr. Lawrence Gomme, ‘On the Method of determining the Value of Folklore as Ethnological Data,’ in the Fourth Report of the Ethnographical Survey Committee17.