Bonfire Night as featured in 'The Return of the Native' by Thomas Hardy
A Pagan Connection ? One puzzling aspect of Thomas Hardy's 'The Return of the Native', first serialised in Belgravia magazine 1878, was the depiction of Bonfire Night as some sort of Pagan festival with links to a tradition going back centuries. It must be noted straight away that the 'Wessex' depicted in Hardy's novels is a fictional creation, though obviously he was drawing on his extensive knowledge of rural Dorset when writing. However, at first reading it is strange to think that the main festival to commemorate the Protestant triumph over a Catholic attempt to seize power was somehow 'Pagan'. On to the text; Clym Yeobright has returned to Egdon Heath and on the prehistoric mound 'Rainbarrow' we are offered a gorgeous description of a bonfire burning away "It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before be