94 EOYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Turning- to songs connected with Christian festivals, we are at once 

 struck b}' the persistence with which both song and fete have kept the 

 form of Pagan moulds. Usuall}^, when a Pagan custom was too strong 

 to be killed, it Avas adapted to Christian purposes ; and this pi"actice 

 became so universal, that Villemarqué's sa3ung that the cross was planted 

 on the dolmen, is as applicable to the whole of Christendom as it is to 

 Brittany : he might have gone a step further, to say that the cross itself 

 is almost as much Pagan as Christian. The mixture of the two beliefs in 

 folksongs is veiy curious. No conversion to Christianity has ever suc- 

 ceeded in preventing- Paganism from living at least a legendary life, and 

 often a life of real power. At the present day in Tinnevelly the Anglican 

 mi.ssi< manes cannot stamp out caste among the native Christians, nor 

 pi'event their wearing the tali, a goklen wedding-token, with the cross on 

 one side and a figure of Lakshmi, the Hindoo goddess of Fortune, on 

 the other.*^' In a Portugese ballad the king hearing a lovely song asks 

 "Is it an angel in Heaven or a 8ii*en in the sea ?" Whole nations have 

 adopted patron saints, not because of their sanctity, but from their real 

 or imaginar}' likeness to pO])uhir heathen deities : no Northern folk would 

 ever have had anything to do with 8t. George, if his fabled fight with the 

 Drag(jn had not resembled that of the mighty Thor with the Midgard- 

 Serpent." 



The adaptation of the old to the new is well seen in such songs as 

 those till lately current in Canada in connection with La GuignoUe. ^'^ 

 The Guijjnoléc is of Druidic origin, and probably was in some way 

 connected with the ceremony of cutting the sacred mistletoe at the winter 

 solstice ; at all events, it was part of a very popular sacred custom, per- 

 formed by the high priest of an immensely powerful class,*^'' a class of 

 immemorial antiquity even in the days of Cîcsar ; and it has come down 

 to us in Canada, through centuries of Old- World change, with enough of 

 its ancient form to remind us of its original ottice in the sacred forest 

 rites. Among the superstitions alluded to in the songs oî La GuignoLée, 

 is the curious belief in the eflicacy of warming a woman's feet to give her 

 a good child-birth ; a practice which Mr. Cagnon thinks originated from 

 prcjpitiatory sacrifices, for he quotes^ from the "Soirées Canadiennes": 

 '•Il est probable que ces vers étranges : 



" Nous prendron.s la fille aînée, 

 Nou.s y ferons chauffer les pieds !" 



sont un reste d'allusions aux sacrifices humains de iancien culte gaulois." 

 In Canada La GuignoUe has ahvaj's been connected with Christmas 

 alms-giving, the singers making a "quOte" in search of all sorts of things, 

 money included, which they afterwards distributed among the parish 

 poor. Sometimes, if the "quêteurs" were unsuccessful at a house, they 

 shouted uncomplimentar}' couplets, reflecting on the stinginess of the 



