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Family, local and general historians all rely heavily upon dates. One frequent difficulty, though, is the regular reference in documents and accounts to Saints' Days, Quarter Days, and other holy days. This volume includes over 1,400 alphabetical entries and a calendar with all the entries listed by date. Without records such as these, who would know that Clean Monday was the first Monday in Lent, that Saint Bartholomew's Day (24th August) was developed from a pagan day, that Saint Luck's Day (18th October) gave its name to Saint Luke's Summer, a period of warm weather around that date and that Witches' Night was a 17th century name for Midsummer's Eve (20th June)

This is an excellent dictionary - a guide to the many special days on which celebrations or annual customs took place, setting them briefly in an historic, religious or social context.

Colin Waters