borrowed certain rites from other festivals earlier in the field. In like manner, Sunday was the heir of usages quite unconnected with it in origin; or, to change the metaphor, it was a magnet attracting to itself various stray particles of paganism that remained after the break up of the old Nature-worship. Students of English history in the seventeenth century cannot fail to remember, how strenuously the Puritans sought to put down Sunday amusements, and how even the edicts of James the First and Charles the First permitted only certain games to be played on Sunday, certain others being declared inconsistent with the aim of that Christian festival. Bourne, in his "Popular Antiquities," published in 1725, remarks:--"In the southern parts of this nation the most of country villages are wont to observe some Sunday in a more particular manner than the other common Sundays of the year, viz., the Sunday after the Day of Dedication, i.e., the Sunday after the Day of the Saint to whom their church was dedicated. Then the inhabitants deck themselves in their gaudiest clothes, and have open doors and splendid entertainments for the reception and treating of their relations and friends who visit them on that occasion from each neighbouring town. The morning is spent for the most part at church, the remaining part of the day in eating and drinking, and so is also a day or two afterwards, together with all sorts of rural pastimes and exercises, such as dancing on the green, wrestling, cudgelling, &c. Agreeable to this, we are told that formerly, on the Sunday after the Encoenia, or Feast of the Dedication of the Church, it was usual for a great number of the inhabitants of the village, both grown and young, to meet together at break of day, and to cry, 'Holy Wakes, Holy Wakes,' and after Matens go to feasting and sporting, which they continued for two or three days."