charms. It was an old popular belief in the Highlands of Perthshire that if on Hallow-eve one were to go alone around one of the fairy hillocks nine times withershins (sinistrorsum), a door would open by which he could enter the subterranean abode of the good people.[1]
In Joseph Jacobs's version of the fairy tale of Childe Rowland it was because in seeking the ball lost by her brothers in their play their sister Burd Ellen ran around a church withershins that the fairies carried her away. Also, when the third brother seeks her in Elfland, it is by following the direction given him by the hen-wife viz., to go three times withershins around the fairy hill that he obtains entrance to the Dark Tower, from which he safely carries the long-lost sister and the two elder brothers.[2]
As contra-sunwise motions were thought to be of ill omen or to be able to work in supernatural ways, so it came to be believed that to reverse other acts as, for instance, reading the Bible or repeating the Lord's prayer backward might produce powerful counter-charms. The negroes in the Southern States often resort to both of these latter practices to lay disturbing ghosts. In the ring games of our school children they always move sunwise, though whether because of convenience or from some forgotten reason who can say?
The weight of authority concerning the English May-day festivities and ceremonies goes to prove that their origin was in the old Roman Floralia, but there is some evidence to show that such celebrations are at least in part of Gothic origin. I suppose that there is little or no doubt that the northern European nations did welcome the return of the spring sun with dancing, and Brand quotes Borlase as stating that the May rejoicings in Cornwall are a gratulation to the spring. The old Beltane games and dances so named from a corrupted spelling of the compound derived from the Phoenician word Baal, the sun, and the Gaelic word tein, meaning fire that were practiced in Perthshire and other parts of Scotland until the beginning of this century, contained many survivals of sun-worship.[3]
Lady "Wilde says that the Beltane dance in a circle about a bush hung with ribbons and garlands, or about a lighted bush or a bonfire, celebrating the returning power of the sun, is still kept up in parts of Ireland on May-day, and that those taking part in the dance always move sunwise.[4] It seems highly probable that
- ↑ Dr. Grahame's Scenery of the Perthshire Highlands, quoted by Scott in notes to Lady of the Lake, canto iv.
- ↑ English Fairy Tales, Childe Rowland p. 117 et seq.
- ↑ See Napier's Folklore in the West of Scotland, pp. 161-1 70.
- ↑ Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland, p. 106.
