Bede’s further statements as to the Anglo-Saxon year are very important and have been much disputed. He represents it as a lunisolar year with lunar months. It began on Dec. 25th; this night the heathens called _modra nect, id est matrum noctem ob causam, ut suspicamur, ceremoniarum quas in ea pervigiles agebant_ (“that is the night of the mothers, because, as we suppose, of some ceremonies which they performed in the night”). In an ordinary year each season had three months, in leap-year the thirteenth month was intercalated in the summer, it was a third _liða_ and a year of this kind was called _annus thri-lidi_. Further, the year was divided into two halves, winter and summer, of six months each, and winter began with the month _wintirfyllið_. Here and here alone have we an account of a heathen Germanic lunisolar year. _A priori_ such an account contains nothing surprising. Tacitus, _Germ._ XI, had already stated that the Germans observed the lunar month. The question is whether they also named the months and arrived at a fixed series, whereby the empirical intercalation of a month would arise of itself. In the last centuries of heathen times they were certainly not at a lower stage of civilisation than many other peoples in various parts of the world among whom this form of year did arise, but the trustworthiness of the report is far from being established by this general consideration. Bilfinger has subjected the account to severe criticism, and on internal evidence states it to be a construction of Bede’s[1009]. The account, he says, fluctuates between the solar and the lunar year; for instance Bede says in one place that the year begins on December 25th, and in another that winter begins with the lunar month _wintirfyllið_. But this is done in any description of a lunisolar year that does not choose expressions with pedantic accuracy. Even in modern scientific handbooks we read e. g. that the Attic year began with the summer solstice, which is an abbreviated and incorrect expression for ‘at the first new moon after the summer solstice’. The learned chronologist, Bede, has, according to Bilfinger, elaborated his system upon the following points of departure: the derivation of the word ‘month’ from ‘moon’, the phrase _annus thri-lidi_, which really means ‘a year so favourable that three sea-voyages can be made in it’, and the beginning of the year on Dec. 25th, which is assumed by Bilfinger to be the ecclesiastical beginning of the year on Christmas Day, at that time used in England. The Anglo-Saxon names of months, he concludes, are accordingly nothing more than native terms for the Julian months, and therefore first became names of months on the introduction of the Roman calendar. The criticism is acute, but is not without its weak points. Bede knew quite well that the Latin _mensis_ is connected with μήν and properly means lunar month, and had a very good knowledge of matters chronological;