The European three-score-day-tide calendar is rather an ingenious conjecture than an ascertained fact of history. When the Germano-Keltic peoples came under the influence of Roman civilization, they adopted amongst other things the Roman calendar, first in its primitive form and then in the more scientific one given to it under Julius Caesar. The latter divided the year into four quarters and twelve months, and carried with it a knowledge of the solstices, at which the astronomy neither of Kelts nor of Germans seems to have previously arrived[379]. The feasts again underwent a process of dislocation in order to harmonize them with the new arrangement. The ceremonies of the winter feast were pulled back to November 1 or pushed forward to January 1. The high summer feast was attracted from mid-May and mid-July respectively to the important Roman dates of the _Floralia_ on May 1 and the summer solstice on June 24. Last of all, to complete the confusion, came, on the top of three-score-day-tide calendar and Roman calendar alike, the scheme of Christianity with its host of major and minor ecclesiastical festivals, some of them fixed, others movable. Inevitably these in their turn began to absorb the agricultural customs. The present distribution of the five original feasts, therefore, is somewhat as follows. The winter feast is spread over all the winter half of the year from All Souls day to Twelfth night. A later chapter will illustrate its destiny more in detail. The ploughing feast is to be sought mainly in Plough Monday, in Candlemas and in Shrovetide or Carnival[380]; the beginning of summer feast in Palm Sunday, Easter and St. Mark’s day; the early variety of the high summer feast probably also in Easter, and certainly in May-day, St. George’s day, Ascensiontide with its Rogations, Whitsuntide and Trinity Sunday; the later variety of the same feast in Midsummer day and Lammastide; and the harvest feast in Michaelmas. These are days of more or less general observance. Locally, in strict accordance with the policy of Gregory the Great as expounded to Mellitus, the floating customs have often settled upon conveniently neighbouring dates of wakes, rushbearings, kirmesses and other forms of vigil or dedication festivals[381]; and even, in the utter oblivion of their primitive significance, upon the anniversaries of historical events, such as Royal Oak day on May 29[382], or Gunpowder day. Finally it may be noted, that of the five feasts that of high summer is the one most fully preserved in modern survivals. This is partly because it comes at a convenient time of year for the out-of-door holiday-making which serves as a preservative for the traditional rites; partly also because, while the pastoral element in the feasts of the beginnings of winter and summer soon became comparatively unimportant through the subordination of pasturage to tillage, and the ploughing and harvest feasts tended more and more to become affairs of the individual farm