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The British Camp on the Herefordshire Beacon, Essays on Scenes and Incidents in the Lives of the Ancient Britons
The British Camp on the Herefordshire Beacon Essays on Scenes and Incidents in the Lives of the Ancient Britons Author:James McKay General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1875 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. THE MAT HILL "FIRES OF GOD." This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. -- Great God, I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed out-worn So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. -- Wordmorth. the memory of living men the first of May was indeed "the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New- Tear," throughout the whole length and breadth of the country. The large part played in its celebration by the flowers of the field would naturally cause one to conclude that it was unmistakably a festival of Latin origin, modified to suit the purposes of the Christian Church, but, strangely enough, its speech betrayed it. A favourite refrain to the famous old ballads sung round the garlanded poles, where young men and damsels tripped lightly, was, as everybody knows, " Derry down, derry down, ho ! derry down/' and we almost start in astonishment when Celticscholars tell us that these words are British ones, only slightly corrupted, meaning literally " Let us dance round the oak! let us dance round the oak"! which, therefore, is in all probability the very chorus sung by officiating priests round the " Fires of God," kindled on the high places at the return of each spring solstice, long anterior to the time when Julius Ccesar first set foot on the soil of Albion. Confirmations of the Druidical orig...« less