On the twenty-fourth night after Old Christmas, Lerwick closed the Yule season with a masked torchlight procession. The townsfolk gathered at the Market Cross at nine in the evening in disguises and marched through the streets with torches. Hazlitt called the day Uphalie Day.
Up-Helly-Aa at Lerwick
29 January · Lerwick, Shetland
Still kept
dressed in various masquerading disguises, and there having torches provided, they form a procession, which marches through the streets of the town.
From Hazlitt's Faiths and Folklore, vol. 2, p. 607. Read the original
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