certain holiday festivals or vigils, once very popular all over England. On the first introduction of Christianity into Britain, Christian festivals were instituted in the room of the idolatrous entertainments in which the heathen indulged, and the suffering day of the martyr whose relics were deposited in the building set apart for such objects, or the day on which the church was actually dedicated, formed the established feast of the parish. At first these feasts were clearly distinguished among the Saxons, as appears from the laws of the Confessor, where Walachia, the dies dedicationis, or dedicatio, is repeatedly discriminated from the propria festivitas sancti, or celebratio sancti.

In 1536 the dedication-day was ordered for the future to be kept on the first Sunday in October, and the festival of the patron saint to be celebrated no longer. The latter was, by way of pre-eminence, denominated the church's holiday, or its peculiar festival. And the evening before every saint's day, in the Jewish method of reckoning the hours, being an actual hour of the day, and therefore, like that, appropriated to the duties of public religion, as they reckoned Sunday from the first to commence at the sunset of Saturday, the evening preceding the church's holiday would be observed with all the devotion of the festival. The people actually repaired to the church, and joined in the services of it; and they thus spent the evening of their greater festivities, in the monasteries of the north, as early as the conclusion of the seventh century.

These services were naturally denominated, from their late hours, weocan or wakes, and vigilis or eves. That of the anniversary at Ripon, as early as the commencement of the eighth century, is expressly denominated the vigil. But that of the church's holiday was named cyrie weocan, or church-wake, the church-vigil, or church-eve. And it was this commencement of both with a wake which has now caused the days to be generally preceded with vigils, and the church-holiday particularly to be denominated the church-wake. So religiously were the eve and festival of the patron saint observed for many ages by the Saxons, even as late as the reign of Edgar, the former being spent in the church, and employed in prayer. And the wakes, and all the other holidays in the year, were put upon the same footing with the octaves of Christmas, Easter, and of Pentecost. In every parish, on the returning anniversary of the saint, little pavilions were constructed of boughs, and the people in them indulged in hospitality and mirth. The feasting of the saint's day, however, was soon abused; and even in the body of the church, when the people were assembled for devotion, they began to mind diversions, and to introduce drinking. The growing intemperance gradually stained the service of the vigil, till the festivity of it was converted into the rigor of a fast.

The "late-wake" of the Highlanders, the "lake-wake" of the Anglo-Saxons, the "lyke-wake" of the early English, and the "wake" of the Irish, all point to a custom once very common in the north of Europe, and not yet quite discontinued. This consisted of the waking or watching of the body of a deceased friend before burial. (See Brand's Popular Antiquities, by Ellis.)