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. In 1860, I was residing near the head of Loch Tay during the season of the Hallowe'en feast. For several days before Hallowe'en, boys and youths collected wood and conveyed it to the most prominent places on the hill sides in their neighbourhood. Some of the heaps were as large as a corn-stack or hay-rick. After dark on Hallowe'en, these heaps were kindled, and for several hours both sides of Loch Tay were illuminated as far as the eye could see. I was told by old men that at the beginning of this century men as well as boys took part in getting up the bonfires, and that, when the fire was ablaze, all joined hands and danced round the fire, and made a great noise; but that, as these gatherings generally ended in drunkenness and rough and dangerous fun, the ministers set their faces against the observance, and were seconded in their efforts by the more intelligent and well-behaved in the community; and so the practice was discontinued by adults and relegated to school boys. In the statistical account of the parish of Callander, the same practice is referred to. It is stated that "When the bonfire was consumed, the ashes of the fire were carefully collected in the form of a circle, and a stone put in near the circumference for every person in the several families concerned in getting up the fire; and whatever stone is moved out its place or injured before next morning, the person represented by the stone is devoted or fey, and is supposed not to live twelve months from that day." In all probability this devoted person was in olden times offered as a sacrifice to the fire god on the great day