the feast of the archangel St Michael on the 29th of September, was instituted, according to Brady (Clavis Calendaria, vol. iii.), in A.D. 487. On Michaelmas-day, which is a stated rent-day in this country, there is an old custom, still kept up in certain districts, of having a roast goose to dinner, probably on account of the fact alluded to by an amusing writer in The World, No. 10, that "stubble geese are in the highest perfection" at that period. There are also a few quaint lines bearing on this point in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1695, beginning, "Geese now in their prime season are;" and there is a common saying that "if you eat goose on Michaelmas-day, you will never want money all the year round."

There was another custom on this day of which few traces, if any, now remain, viz., the baking and eating of St Michael's cake or bannock. Martin, in his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, says that the inhabitants of Skye, and especially those of Kilhar village, have on this day a "general cavalcade, and several families bake the cake called St Michael's hannock, . . . and all strangers, together with those of each family, must eat the bread that night." Macaulay, in his History of St Kilda, alludes to the same observance in that island, and adds, that all who ate the cake "had, of course, some title to the friendship and protection of Michael." (See Brand's Popular Antiquities, Bohm, vol. i., pp. 353, 367, 372.)