1914.] REPORTS. 129 



died out altogether. On this last anniversary in November 

 (J 914) I did not see the flame or glow of a single bonfire, or 

 hear any of those noisy detonations which a few years ago 

 used so often to obtrude themselves. The St. Martin's Pro- 

 cession was discontinued some three years since (1911) by the 

 order of the then St. Martin's constables ; while the sale of 

 fireworks by the ironmongers in town, as well as by many of 

 the smaller shops, came to naught when the Court enacted 

 (1905) that all vendors of these popular explosives must take 

 out a licence. The shopkeepers felt that the amount of trade 

 done did not really warrant the cost of a licence and so they 

 stopped the business altogether, which nobody regretted, for 

 the annual celebration had become a bit of a nuisance, besides 

 being more or less a public danger. 



Looked at, however, from a folklore point of view, the 

 most interesting local feature of the whole affair is the way in 

 which this novel Gruy Fawkes' celebration — with its cheerful 

 bonfire — seems at once to have absorbed and superseded the 

 much older Island rite of burying the Bout de V An 

 (Boodlo) or Old-Years-End, which bleak and frigid ob- 

 servance had been practiced in the Island from very distant 

 times. 



Probably, too, the English observance itself was merely 

 a transfer of some already-existing and much older rite, and 

 its adoption as a commemoration of this newer projected 

 crime, the attempted perpetration of which must have caused 

 a great sensation at the time. Folklorists, of course, do not 

 know this for certain, because exact records are wanting, but 

 the likelihood of such a transfer is highly probable — much 

 more probable, indeed, than Avould be the invention and 

 inception of an entirely new ceremonial which would have 

 taken a very long time to spread and become popular, even if 

 it had ever really caught on at all. 



A correspondent wrote recently to Tit-Bits under the 

 signature of " Henry " and said that our present National 

 Anthem was originally composed for November 5th, and was 

 intended to be sung only on that date as a hymn of thanks- 

 giving and thankfulness for the country's deliverance from the 

 horrors of the Gunpowder Plot. The song is said to have 

 been first rehearsed in 1 607 in the Merchant Taylor's Hall, 

 London, before James I., by the gentlemen and children of 

 the Chapel Royal (see Tit-Bits, November 21st, 1914, page 

 265). This statement about the origin and intention of what 

 is now the National Anthem was new to me. I do not 

 remember to have met with it before. If it be true, it may 



