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614
ELEMENTS.
strictly superintended by priests, we are expressely assured by
Usher (Trias thaumat. p. 125), who founds on Evinus : Lege
etiam severissima cavebatur, ut omnes ignes per universas regiones
ista nocte exstinguerentur, et nulli liceat ignem reaccendere
nisi prius Ternoriae (Tighmora, whom we know from Ossian)
a magis rogus sacrificiorum exstrueretur , et quicunque hanc legem
in aliquo transgrederetur non alia mulcta quam capitis supplicio
1
commissi delicti poenam luebat.
Leo (Malb. gl. i, 35) has ingeniously put
forward an antithesis
between a god of war Seal or Bael, and a god of peace Siglie or
Sithich ; nay, by this distinction he explains
the brothers Bel-
lovesus and Sigovesus in Livy 5, 34 as servants (vesus = Gaelic
uis, uais, minister) of Beal and Sighe, connecting Sighe with
that silent peaceful folk the elves, who are called sighe (supra,
p. 444 n.) : to Beal were offered the May fires, bealtine, to Sighe
the November fires, samhtheine (peace-fire).
In Wales too they
lighted fires on May 1 and Nov. 1, both being called coelcerth
(see Suppl.).
I still hesitate to accept all the inferences, but undoubtedly
Beal must be taken for a divine being, whose worship is likely to
have extended beyond the Celtic nations. At p. 228 I identified
him with the German Phol ; and it is of extraordinary value to
our research, that in the Rhine districts we come upon a Pfultag,
Pulletag (P. s day), which fell precisely on the 2nd of May
(Weisth. 2, 8. 3, 748). We know that our forefathers very
generally kept the beginning of May as a great festival, and it is
still regarded as the trysting-time of witches, i.e. once of wisewomen
and fays; who can doubt that heathen sacrifices blazed
that day? Pholtag then answers to Bealteine? and moreover
Baldag is the Saxon form for Paltar (p. 229).
Were the German May-fires, after the conversion, shifted to
Easter and Midsummer, to adapt them to Christian worship ? Or,
as the summer solstice was itself deeply rooted in heathenism, is
it Eastertide alone that represents the ancient May-fires ? For,
as to the Celtic November, the German Yule or Midwinter might
easily stand for that, even in heathen times.
1 Conf. the accounts in Mone s Geschichte des heidenth. 2, 485.
2 All over England on the 1st of May they set up a May pole, which may be
from pole, palus, AS. pol ; yet Pol, Phol may deserve to be taken into account too.