Golowan from Lowender by Kemper Norton
Midsummer is thence in the Cornish tongue called '' Goluan," which signifies both light and rejoicing. At these fires the Cornish attend with lighted torches, tarred and pitched at the end, and make their perambulations round their fires, and go from village to village, carrying their torches before them; and this is certainly the remains of the Druid superstition, for " faces praeferre," to carry lighted torches, was reckoned a kind of Gentilism, and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils: they were in the eye of the law " accen sores facularum," and thought to sacrifice to the devil, and to deserve capital punishment.— Borlase, Antiquities of Cornwall, 1754, p. 130.
