for the benefit of souls in purgatory, which was to be kept by prayers and almsgiving.”  It is easy to perceive that, while in the festival of Hallowe’en we have the survival of the old Druidical festival of thank-offering to the sun-god for the ingathering of the fruits of the earth, we have also in these two festivals of All Saints and All Souls the survival of the ancient Ferralia, or festival to the dead, when offerings were made to both good and bad spirits, to prevent them haunting the living; and thus we can account for the prevalence of the numerous superstitions concerning ghosts and evil spirits connected with the festival of Hallowe’en.  That these Church feasts were regarded as the substitute for the Ferralia of Pagan Rome is verified by Father Meagan in his work on The Mass.  We quote from Jamieson:—­“Such was the devotion of the heathen on this day by offering sacrifices for the souls in purgatory, by praying at the graves, and performing processions round the churchyards with lighted tapers, that they called the month the month of pardons, indulgences, and absolutions for souls in purgatory; or, as Plutarch calls it, the purifying month, or season of purification, because the living and dead were supposed to be purged and purified on these occasions from their sins by sacrifices, flagellations, and other works of mortification.”  Plutarch, I think, must have referred to the month of February as the purifying month.  Father Meagan has not referred to the change of date made by the Church.  Doubtless the Christian Church, in instituting these festivals, intended, by divesting them of their heathen basis, to christianise the people; but, like Naaman of old, the worshippers, while they worshipped in the buildings in conformity with the regulations of their new teachers, yet retained many of their old Pagan beliefs and ceremonies, and even their teachers were not thoroughly de-Paganised,—­and so the old and new commingled and crystallized together.

In all the four festivals we have been considering, there survive relics of fire-worship, and through all there runs a similarity of observance and belief; but the special practices are not everywhere joined to the same festival in all localities.  In this part of the country, the special observances connected with Hallowe’en were, in other parts of the country, observed in connection with the summer festival.  Now, however, we are glad to say, these superstitious ceremonies and beliefs in their old gross forms are fast passing away, or have become so modified that we can scarcely recognise their relations to the old fire-worship.