IX CORNISH CUSTOMS OLD customs, and festivals carrying in them the germ of a meaning and significance long forgotten by those who practised them but intelligible to students of antiquity, continued to be observed in Cornwall when they had died out in most other places. There is no part of England where so many curious observances, superstitions and fes- tivals are still observed as in Cornwall. Midsummer Day merrymakings were long kept up in many places, especially in regard to the part played by fire, and Richard Edmonds, secretary for Cornwall to the Cambrian Archaeological Association, writing in 1862, says : " It is the immemorial usage in Penzance, and the neighbour- ing towns and villages, to kindle bonfires and torches on Midsummer Eve. ... St. Peter's Eve is dis- tinguished by a similar display. . . . On these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the 135
