We may conjecture
that in doing so he merely provided for the continuance of an old custom
which he himself had observed in the same place in his youth.[529] At
the village of Tarbolton in Ayrshire a bonfire has been annually kindled
from time immemorial on the evening of the first Monday after the
eleventh of June. A noted cattle-market was formerly held at the fair on
the following day. The bonfire is still lit at the gloaming by the lads
and lasses of the village on a high mound or hillock just outside of the
village. Fuel for it is collected by the lads from door to door. The
youth dance round the fire and leap over the fringes of it. The many
cattle-drovers who used to assemble for the fair were wont to gather
round the blazing pile, smoke their pipes, and listen to the young folk
singing in chorus on the hillock. Afterwards they wrapped themselves in
their plaids and slept round the bonfire, which was intended to last all
night.[530] Thomas Moresin of Aberdeen, a writer of the sixteenth
century, says that on St. Peter's Day, which is the twenty-ninth of
June, the Scotch ran about at night with lighted torches on mountains
and high grounds, "as Ceres did when she roamed the whole earth in
search of Proserpine";[531] and towards the end of the eighteenth
century the parish minister of Loudoun, a district of Ayrshire whose
"bonny woods and braes" have been sung by Burns, wrote that "the custom
still remains amongst the herds and young people to kindle fires in the
high grounds in honour of Beltan.
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