ANDREW [ANDREW

See also:

• ANDREW [ANDREW HALLIDAY DUFF] HALLIDAY (1830-1877)

HALLIDAY

See also:

• DUFF, ALEXANDER (1806-1878)

DUFF] HALLIDAY (1830-1877)  , British journalist and dramatist, was born at Marnoch, Banffshire, in 1830 . He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and in 1849 he came to London, and discarding the name of Duff, devoted himself to literature . His first engagement was with the daily papers, and his work having attracted the notice of Thackeray, he was invited to write for the Cornhill Magazine . From 1861 he contributed largely to All the Year Round, and many of his articles were republished in collected form . He was also the author, alone and with others, of a great number of farces, burlesques and melodramas and a peculiarly successful adapter of popular novels for the stage . Of these Little Em'ly (1869), his adaptation of David Copperfield, was warmly approved by Dickens himself, and enjoyed a long run at Drury Lane . Halliday died in London on the loth of April 187 7 . HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS, JAMES ORCHARD (1820-1889), English Shakespearian scholar, son of Thomas Halliwell, was born in London, on the 21st of June 1820 . He was educated privately and at Jesus College, Cambridge . He devoted himself to antiquarian research, particularly in early English literature . In 1839 he edited Sir John Mandeville's Travels; in 1842 published an Account of the European MSS. in the Chetham Library, besides a newly discovered metrical romance of the 15th century (Torrent of Portugal) . He became best known, however, as a Shakespearian editor and collector .

In 1848 he brought out his

Life of Shakespeare, which passed through several editions; in 1853-1865 a sumptuous edition, limited to 1 50 copies, of Shakespeare in folio, with full critical notes; in 1863 a Calendar of the Records at Stratford-on-Avon; in 1864 a History of New Place . After 187o he entirely gave up textual criticism, and devoted his attention to elucidating the particulars of Shakespeare's life . He collated all the available facts and documents in relation to it, and exhausted the information to be found in local records in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare . He was mainly instrumental in the purchase of New Place for the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, and in the formation there of the Shakespeare museum . His publications in all numbered more than sixty volumes . He assumed the name of Phillipps in 1872, under the will of the grandfather of his first wife, a daughter of Sir Thomas Phillipps the antiquary . He took an active interest in the Camden Society, the Percy Society and the Shakespeare Society, for which he edited many early English and Elizabethan works . From 1845 Halliwell was excluded from the library of the British Museum on account of the suspicion attaching to his possession of some manuscripts which had been removed from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge . He published privately an explanation of the matter in 1845 . His house, Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, was full of rare and curious works, and he generously gave many of them to the Chetham library, Manchester, to the town library of Penzance, to the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, and to the library of Edinburgh university . He died on the 3rd of January 1889 . HALLOWE'EN, or ALL HALLOWS EVE, the name given to the 31st of October as the vigil of Hallowmas or All Saints' Day .

Though now known as little else but the eve of the

Christian festival, Hallowe'en and its formerly attendant ceremonies long antedate Christianity . The two chief characteristics of ancient Hallowe'en were the lighting of bonfires and the belief that of all nights in the year this is the one during which ghosts and witches are most likely to wander abroad . Now on or about the 1st of November the Druids held their great autumn festival and lighted fires in honour of the Sun-god in thanksgiving for the harvest . Further, it was a Druidic belief that on the eve of this festival Saman, lord of death, called together the wicked souls that within the past twelve months had been condemned to inhabit the bodies of animals . Thus it is clear that the main celebrations of Hallowe'en were purely Druidical, and this is further proved by the fact that in parts of Ireland the 31st of October was, and even still is, known as Oidhche Shamhna, " Vigil of Saman." On the Druidic ceremonies were grafted some of the characteristics of the Roman festival in honour of Pomona held about the 1st of November, in which nuts and apples, as representing the winter store of fruits, played an important part . Thus the roasting of nuts and the sport known as " apple-ducking "—attempting to seize with the teeth an apple floating in a tub of water,—were once the universal occupation of the young folk in medieval England on the 31st of October . The custom of lighting Hallowe'en fires survived until recent years in the highlands of Scotland and Wales . In the dying embers it was usual to place as many small stones as there were persons around, and next morning a search was made . If any of the pebbles were displaced it was regarded as certain that the person represented would die within the twelve months . For details of the Hallowe'en games and bonfires see Brand's Antiquities of Great Britain; Chambers's Book of Days; Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, ch. xx . (Elemente) and ch. xxxiv . (Aberglaube) ; and J .

G . Frazer's

Golden Bough, vol. iii . Compare also BELTANE and BONFIRE .