And finally, just as in May village dipping customs attached themselves in the seventeenth century to Royal Oak day, so in the same century we find the winter festival fires turned to new account in the celebration of the escape of King and Parliament from the nefarious machinations of Guy Fawkes. CHAPTER XII NEW YEAR CUSTOMS [_Bibliographical Note._--The two works of Dr. Tille remain of importance. The compilations specially devoted to the usages of the Christmas season are chiefly of a popular character; W. Sandys, _Christmas Tide_ (n. d.), J. Ashton, _A Righte Merrie Christmasse!!!_ (n. d.), and, for French data, E. Müller, _Le Jour de l’An_ (n. d.), may be mentioned; H. Usener, _Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, vol. ii (1889), prints various documents, including the _Largum Sero_ of a Bohemian priest named Alsso, on early fifteenth-century Christmas eve customs. Most of the books named in the bibliographical note to chap. v also cover the subject. A _Bibliography of Christmas_ runs through _Notes and Queries_, 6th series, vi. 506, viii. 491, x. 492, xii. 489; 7th series, ii. 502, iii. 152, iv. 502, vi. 483, x. 502, xii. 483; 8th series, ii. 505, iv. 502, vi. 483, viii. 483, x. 512, xii. 502; 9th series, ii. 505, iv. 515, vi. 485.] It is the outcome of the last chapter that all the folk-customs of the winter half of the year, from Michaelmas to Plough Monday, must be regarded as the flotsam and jetsam of a single original feast. This was a New Year’s feast, held by the Germano-Keltic tribes at the beginning of the central European winter when the first snows fell about the middle of November, and subsequently dislocated and dispersed by the successive clash of Germano-Keltic civilization with the rival schemes of Rome and of Christianity. A brief summary of the customs in question will show clearly their common character. For purposes of classification they may be divided into several groups. There are such customs belonging to the agricultural side of the old winter feast as have not been transferred with the growing importance of tillage to the feast of harvest. There are the customs of its domestic side, as a feast of the family hearth and of the dead ancestors. There are the distinctively New Year customs of omen and prognostication for the approaching twelve months. There are the customs of play, common more or less to all the village festivals. And, finally, there are a small number of customs, or perhaps it would be truer to say legends, which appear to owe their origin not merely to heathenism transformed by Christianity, but to Christianity itself. Each of these groups may well claim a more thoroughgoing consideration than can here be given to any one of them.