The Irish still retain the Phœnician custom of lighting fires at short distances, and making the cattle pass between them. Fathers, too, taking their children in their arms, jump or run through them, thus passing the latter as it were through the flames--the very practice so expressly condemned in Scripture. But even this custom appears to have been only a substitute for the atrocious sacrifice of children as practised by the elder Phœnicians. The god Saturn, that is, Moloch, was represented by a statue bent slightly forward, and so placed that the least weight was sufficient to alter its position. Into the arms of this idol the priest gave the child to be sacrificed, when, its balance being thus destroyed, it flung or rather dropt, the victim into a fiery furnace that blazed below. If other proofs were wanting of Eastern origin, we might find them in the fact that Britain was called by the earlier inhabitants the Island of Beli, and that Bel had also the name of Hu, a word which we see again occurring in the _Huli_ festival of India.--_New Curiosities of Literature_, vol. i. p. 229. See Higgins’ _Celtic Druids_, chap. v. sect. 23, p. 181; _Household Words_, 1859, vol. xix. p. 557; Tolan’s _History of the Druids_, 8vo, p. 115; _Celtic Researches_, 1806, 8vo, p. 191; Vossius, _On the Origin of Idolatries_: _Essai sur le Culte des Divinités Génératrices_. _Going a-Maying._--Bourne (_Antiquitates Vulgares_, chap. xxv.) describes this custom as it existed in his time:--On the calends, or first of May, commonly called May-day, the juvenile part of both sexes are wont to rise a little after midnight and walk to some neighbouring wood, accompanied with music and blowing of horns, where they break down branches from the trees, and adorn themselves with nosegays and crowns of flowers; when this is done they return with their booty homewards, about the rising of the sun, and make their doors and windows to triumph with their flowery spoils. In Chaucer’s _Court of Love_ we read that early on May-day “Fourth goth al the court, both most and lest, to fetche the flowris fresh and blome.” In the old romance, too, _La Morte d’Arthur_, translated by Sir Thomas Maleor, or Mellor, in the reign of Edward IV., is a passage descriptive of the customs of the times. “Now it befell in the moneth of lusty May, that Queene Guenever called unto her the knyghtes of the Round Table, and gave them warning that early in the morning she should ride on maying into the woods and fields beside Westminster.” The rural clergy, who seem to have mingled themselves with their flock on all occasions, whether of sorrow, devotion, or amusement, were reproved by Grostete, or Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln, for going a-maying.--_Med. Ævi Kalend._ vol. i. p. 233.