首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
A far cry from the pirates and princesses of today, costumes during Halloween’s precursor centuries ago included animal skins an
A far cry from the pirates and princesses of today, costumes during Halloween’s precursor centuries ago included animal skins an
admin
2015-10-21
53
问题
A far cry from the pirates and princesses of today, costumes during Halloween’s precursor centuries ago included animal skins and heads, drag getups, and even mechanical horse heads, historians say.
Records of the precursor to Halloween—the Celtic new year celebration of Saimhain—are extremely threadbare, said Ken Nilsen, professor of Celtic studies at Canada’s St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. "We don’t have actual records telling us what it was like in ancient times, so our knowledge is based principally on folk customs that continued until recent centuries,"Nilsen told National Geographic News.
Samhain, however, is known to date back at least 2,000 years, based on analysis of a Celtic bronze calendar discovered in the 1890s in Coligny, France, in what was then called Gaul. The festival marked the end of the Celtic year, when the harvest was gathered and animals were rounded up. It’s said the hides of cattle and other livestock slaughtered at this time were ritually worn during festivities that likely hark back to even earlier pagan beliefs.
Ancient Roman writers recorded that tribes in what is now Germany and France held riotous ceremonies where they donned the heads and skins of wild mammals to connect with animal spirits. The custom of wearing animal hides at bonfire-lighted Celtic feast ceremonies survived until recent times, Nilsen notes. "This was certainly done at Martinmas(the November 11 Christian feast of St. Martin)in Ireland and Scotland, which, in the old calendar, would be Halloween,"he said. "There might have been an excess of livestock, so it would make sense to slaughter an animal,"Nilsen said.
Samhain night was also a celebration of the dead—the one time the spirits were believed to walk among the living. Again, the earliest rituals aren’t known in detail, but in recent centuries families put out food and even set extra table places for their ancestors at Samhain. It was also a night when people dressed to create mischief and confusion, according to Bettina Arnold of the Center for Celtic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "The spirits of the dead were impersonated by young men dressed with masked, veiled or blackened faces," Arnold wrote in an essay titled Halloween Customs in the Celtic World. These disguises were intended both to protect revelers from any malevolent spirits and to fool households they visited. In Scotland and elsewhere, revelers masquerading as the dead would go around demanding food offerings—a forerunner to today’s trick-or-treating. Nilsen of St. Francis Xavier University added: " People put on costumes which frequently included blackened faces and so on, representing spooks, demons, or whatever. "
According to the University of Wisconsin’s Arnold, on Samhain the boundary between the living and the dead was obliterated— as was the boundary between the sexes. Male youths would dress up as girls and vice versa, she wrote. In Wales, for example, groups of mischievous young men in Halloween drag were referred to as hags. In parts of Ireland, a man dressed as a white horse known as Lair Bhan—an ancient Celtic fertility symbol—led noisy processions at Samhain.
Many Samhain ensembles were incomplete without the appropriate accessories: lanterns made with hollowed-out turnips and candles. Later transplanted to North America with Irish immigrants, the tradition would be replicated in the fatter form of the pumpkin, a fruit native to the New World.
The knowledge about the ancient Halloween comes from the following EXCEPT______.
选项
A、historians’ introduction
B、factual and detailed records
C、today’s Halloween customs
D、books written by ancient Roman writers
答案
B
解析
细节题第二段第二句指出,我们并没有确切的记录来表明古代的万圣节究竟是什么样的,现代人对它的了解基本上是来自于一直延续至今的民间习俗,由此判断[B]为答案,同时排除[C]。第一段指出,几个世纪前的万圣节装束和现在的大相径庭,这是历史学家的描述,因此[A]‘‘历史学家的介绍”是古代万圣节知识的来源之一,故排除;第四段第一句指出,古罗马的作家曾经在书中提到过一些有关古代万圣节的习俗,因此[D]也可排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/tHKO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Self-discipline:theFoundationofProductiveLivingI.Issuestobenoticedatthethoughtofself-disciplineATroublesforso
Self-discipline:theFoundationofProductiveLivingI.Issuestobenoticedatthethoughtofself-disciplineATroublesforso
Why,youmaywonder,shouldspidersbeourfriends?Becausetheyprotectsomanyinsects,andinsectsinclude【M1】_____
Anextremeexampleofafederalsystemistheoneadoptedinthe1970sinYugoslavia,knownasworkers’self-management.Primary
Low-agedOverseasStudentsLow-agedoverseasstudyhasbecomeamajorconcernbythemediaandparentsofthestudents,and
Low-agedOverseasStudentsLow-agedoverseasstudyhasbecomeamajorconcernbythemediaandparentsofthestudents,and
A、Ithasseveralscratchesinit.B、Itwillnotopenproperly.C、Itismissingthedoorhandle.D、Ithasnoseatscovers.B当女士想试
Hawaii’s【N1】______isgivingschoolchildrensomereasontosmile.PublicschoolsaregonnabeclosedmostFridaysforthe【N2】__
Humanbeingsinalltimesandplacesthinkabouttheirworldandwonderattheirplaceinit.Humansarethoughtfulandcreativ
Humanbeingsinalltimesandplacesthinkabouttheirworldandwonderattheirplaceinit.Humansarethoughtfulandcreativ
随机试题
在我国,最大众化的传播媒介是()
中枢性眼肌麻痹
原位癌变的范围是()。
A.心血之濡养B.肺气的肃降C.脾气的运化D.肝气疏泄正常E.肾的气化功能
通风、空调系统中风管应采用的材料的防火要求是()。
2018年3月,某审计组对丙公司2017年度财务收支进行了审计,有关投资与筹资循环审计的情况和资料如下:1.审计人员在对筹资与投资循环内部控制进行调查时了解到:(1)生产、研发和投资等部门根据各自业务发展需要提出资金需求,交财会部门统筹制定筹资计划。
我国政府职能转变的主要措施有()。
材料1 2014年6月22日,在卡塔尔多哈举行的第38届世界遗产大会宣布,中国大运河入选世界文化遗产名录,成为我国第46个世界遗产项目。作为一个大跨度整体联线型文化遗产项目,中国大运河是指我国自春秋时期开凿邗沟以来,先后在隋唐宋时期以洛阳为中心的南北大
根据《宪法》和法律的规定,关于基层群众自治,下列哪一选项是正确的?()。
Behaviorsthatwedonotunderstandoftenbecomenearlyinvisible-evenwhen,inretrospect,weseehowtrulystrangetheyare.
最新回复
(
0
)