Rest Days; A Sociological Study 1 5 5 



ing from Greece to Rome and from Rome to western Europe.-^ 

 The old Irish, whose geasa or taboos have been previously 

 noticed (supra), entertained a great respect for lucky and unlucky 

 days. How they were rationalized by Christian teachers is 

 amusingly illustrated by a marginal note to a medical treatise 

 bearing the date 1733. "The prohibited Mondays of the year. 

 The first Monday in April, on which day Cain was born and his 

 brother slain. The second Monday in August, on which day 

 Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. The thirteenth (the third 

 Monday of ?) December, on which day Judas was born that 

 betrayed Christ."^*^ 



Anglo-Saxon calendars give a total of about twenty-four 

 evil days out of the year, when it is dangerous if not fatal, to 

 begin an enterprise or to travel. These dies mali, it is worth noting, 

 were called " Egyptian days." A manuscript calendar dating 

 from the reign of Henry VI gives a list of thirty-two such days. 

 After the Reformation the old evil days appear to have abated 

 much of their ancient malevolent influences, and to have left 

 behind them only a general superstition against fishermen setting 



^The Vergilian calendar (Georgica, i. 276 sqq.) is obviously an imita- 

 tion of the Hesiodic, though it may be supposed that Vergil, with his 

 intimate knowledge of the farmer's life, incorporated in his catalogue of 

 lucky and unlucky days some of the peasant lore of ancient Italy. 



"° Eleanor Hull, " Old Irish Tabus, or Geasa," Folk-Lore, 1901, xii. 48. 

 In the course of this article Miss Hull has given a new interpretation of 

 the ces noiden Ulad, that extraordinary weakness or prostration which at 

 certain times overtook the king and all the grown warriors of Ulster. In 

 the tale of " The Debility of the Ultonians " it lasts for five days, but 

 in the epic of Tain bo Cuailgne, for about four months, during which 

 time Cuchulainn, who, with women and children, was exempt, kept 

 up a single-handed combat against the invaders of Ulster. Miss Hull 

 believes that five days was the real length of the Ultonian abstention 

 from work and warfare, this period being exaggerated in the epic into 

 four months, perhaps to cover Cuchulainn with glory. She would under- 

 stand such a season of abstinence as analogous to the tabooed periods of 

 other peoples. But this hypothesis, it must be admitted, does not explain 

 why women and children were not subject to the taboo. 



