Book excerpt: Echoes of a Savage Land concerns the rugged life of the ordinary folk of the Irish countryside who carved an existence that has changed utterly in the last half-century. Beginning with rituals observed on the Celtic festival of Samhain Joe McGowan tells with love and humour the story of the customs they practised and the stories they told. Linking the ways of Ireland with ancient Greece and the Aztecs of South America and illustrating his points with quotes from Chaucer and Shakespeare as well as Yeats and Manley Hopkins, Mc Gowan has produced a book that is more than the usual chronicle of country life. Echoes of a Savage Land is a magical doorway into lost worlds, a journey through a way of life unchanged for centuries, but now on the edge of extinction: Witch hares and Rhyming rats - Blood sacrifice and Burnt offerings - Corncrakes and Blackbird pie - Poteen stills and Fear Gortach - Cutting the cailleach and Harvest knots - Mummers and Wrenboys - Quern stones and Stirabout - Haunted houses and Satanic card games.