Actual late survivals of pagan customs in rural England are probably more accurately portrayed in Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native (1878).

Certainly ritual bonfires, the ashes of which were sprinkled on the fields, lived on long after the earlier burning of human sacrifices was replaced by the burning of effigies made of straw.

In Harvest Home, the scarecrows are ritually burned, but Ned discovers to his horror that one bonfire includes a hidden human victim.

Ancient cults of the Mother have received considerable attention from mythologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and also many feminists who take comfort in the former prominence of female deities. For interesting contrasts to Tryon's horror story, one may turn to Robert Graves's Seven Days in New Crete (published in America as Watch the North Wind Rise, 1949) and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982). The former deals with a Utopian reconstruction of...