BleakChesneyWold

                                                       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 the...

                                                                                 Painting :   October (1878) by Jules Bastien-Lepage  * 'Return of the Native' was Hardy's sixth novel and is centred around an area he called Egdon Heath. As a physical location it is not easy to place. Edward Parnell in 'Ghostland' has proposed that geographically Black Heath and Duddle Heath in Dorset fulfil this role PARNELL .Mr Parnell has also cited Hardy's  own view of  his own  creation of 'Wessex' as being "partly real, partly dream country". Egdon Heath also features  in 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' and Hardy's short story 'The Withered Arm'.  The novel opens with an anonymous narrator offering a description of the Heath (  " heathy, furzy, briary wilderness-...