56 
JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
But we have more limited and peculiar traces of the ancient 
cultus of the heavenly bodies. Such, though in modified form, 
are the fast dying superstition that the sun dances on Easter morn- 
ing ; and the lingering belief that when we see the new moon we 
should wish, and courtesy, and turn the money in our pockets. 1 
I believe there is yet a very wide and real, though rarely recog- 
nised, faith in these and kindred practices, here in Devon. To the 
same source we may trace the story told of the ancient church of 
St. Michael on Brent Tor, and — with slight variation — of so many 
other churches in high or low places all over the land. What does 
the legend of the frustration of the intention to build at the foot 
of the hill, by the removal of the materials at night to the summit, 
mean, but that there was a conflict between the friends of the old 
and new faiths — between those who accepted Christianity in its 
entirety, and those who became its nominal adherents, but still 
clung to the ancient sites. Probably the orders of Pope Gregory, 
that the temples of the Saxons should not be destroyed, but con- 
verted to Christian uses, 2 did not meet with general acceptance, 
especially in localities where there were remnants of the elder 
British Church still existing. The legends which tell of the 
removal of materials from hill-top to foot show the same con- 
troversy, with different result. 
The best local illustration of the vitality of the cultus of the 
sun and moon, in the meaningless survival of ritual, is that 
afforded by the gaily-bedecked ship, which from time beyond living 
memory a " company " from Millbrook have been accustomed to 
carry through the streets of the Three Towns on " garland day " — 
them in the cardinal points of the year, as the annunciation of the Virgin 
Mary on the 25th March . . . the vernal equinox ; the feast of John the Bap- 
tist on the 24th of June, which was the summer solstice; the feast of St. 
Michael on September 29th, which was the autumnal equinox ; and the birth 
of Christ on the winter solstice, December 25th, with the feasts of St. Stephen, 
St. John, and the Innocents, as near it as they could place them. ... So also, 
at the entrance of the sun into all the signs of the Julian calendar, they 
placed the days of other saints . . . and if there were any other remarkable 
days in the Julian calendar, they placed the saints upon them." — Prophecies 
of Daniel, ch. ii. part i. p. 144. 
1 To point at the moon was sixty or seventy years since at Ashburton con- 
sidered an insult, provocative of no one knew what evil. Trans. Devon. 
Assoc. vol. xi. p. 110. So it is unlucky to see the new moon through glass. 
The heavenly bodies were worshipped in the open air. 
2 Bede, Eccles. Hist. li. c. 30. 
