In Baden the children used to collect fuel from house to house for the

Midsummer bonfire on St. John's Day; and lads and lasses leaped over the

fire in couples. Here, as elsewhere, a close connexion was traced

between these bonfires and the harvest. In some places it was thought

that those who leaped over the fires would not suffer from backache at

reaping. Sometimes, as the young folk sprang over the flames, they

cried, "Grow, that the hemp may be three ells high!" This notion that

the hemp or the corn would grow as high as the flames blazed or as the

people jumped over them, seems to have been widespread in Baden. It was

held that the parents of the young people who bounded highest over the

fire would have the most abundant harvest; and on the other hand, if a

man contributed nothing to the bonfire, it was imagined that there would

be no blessing on his crops, and that his hemp in particular would never

grow.[409] In the neighbourhood of Bühl and Achern the St. John's fires

were kindled on the tops of hills; only the unmarried lads of the

village brought the fuel, and only the unmarried young men and women

sprang through the flames. But most of the villagers, old and young,

gathered round the bonfires, leaving a clear space for the leapers to

take their run. One of the bystanders would call out the names of a pair

of sweethearts; on which the two would step out from the throng, take

each other by the hand, and leap high and lightly through the swirling

smoke and flames, while the spectators watched them critically and drew

omens of their married life from the height to which each of them

bounded. Such an invitation to jump together over the bonfire was

regarded as tantamount to a public betrothal.[410] Near Offenburg, in

the Black Forest, on Midsummer Day the village boys used to collect

faggots and straw on some steep and conspicuous height, and they spent

some time in making circular wooden discs by slicing the trunk of a

pine-tree across. When darkness had fallen, they kindled the bonfire,

and then, as it blazed up, they lighted the discs at it, and, after

swinging them to and fro at the end of a stout and supple hazel-wand,

they hurled them one after the other, whizzing and flaming, into the

air, where they described great arcs of fire, to fall at length, like

shooting-stars, at the foot of the mountain.[411] In many parts of

Alsace and Lorraine the midsummer fires still blaze annually or did so

not very many years ago.[412] At Speicher in the Eifel, a district which

lies on the middle Rhine, to the west of Coblentz, a bonfire used to be

kindled in front of the village on St. John's Day, and all the young

people had to jump over it. Those who failed to do so were not allowed

to join the rest in begging for eggs from house to house. Where no eggs

were given, they drove a wedge into the keyhole of the door. On this day

children in the Eifel used also to gather flowers in the fields, weave

them into garlands, and throw the garlands on the roofs or hang them on

the doors of the houses. So long as the flowers remained there, they

were supposed to guard the house from fire and lightning.[413] In the

southern Harz district and in Thuringia the Midsummer or St. John's

fires used to be commonly lighted down to about the middle of the

nineteenth century, and the custom has probably not died out. At

Edersleben, near Sangerhausen, a high pole was planted in the ground and

a tar-barrel was hung from it by a chain which reached to the ground.

The barrel was then set on fire and swung round the pole amid shouts of

joy.[414]

[Midsummer fires kindled by the friction of wood in Germany and

Switzerland; driving away demons and witches.]

According to one account, German tradition required that the midsummer

fire should be lighted, not from a common hearth, but by the friction of

two sorts of wood, namely oak and fir.[415] In some old farm-houses of

the Surenthal and Winenthal, in Switzerland, a couple of holes or a

whole row of them may be seen facing each other in the door-posts of the

barn or stable. Sometimes the holes are smooth and round; sometimes they

are deeply burnt and blackened. The explanation of them is this. About

midsummer, but especially on Midsummer Day, two such holes are bored

opposite each other, into which the extremities of a strong pole are

fixed. The holes are then stuffed with tow steeped in resin and oil; a

rope is looped round the pole, and two young men, who must be brothers

or must have the same baptismal name, and must be of the same age, pull

the ends of the rope backwards and forwards so as to make the pole

revolve rapidly, till smoke and sparks issue from the two holes in the

door-posts. The sparks are caught and blown up with tinder, and this is

the new and pure fire, the appearance of which is greeted with cries of

joy. Heaps of combustible materials are now ignited with the new fire,

and blazing bundles are placed on boards and sent floating down the

brook. The boys light torches at the new fire and run to fumigate the

pastures. This is believed to drive away all the demons and witches that

molest the cattle. Finally the torches are thrown in a heap on the

meadow and allowed to burn out. On their way back the boys strew the

ashes over the fields, which is supposed to make them fertile. If a

farmer has taken possession of a new house, or if servants have changed

masters, the boys fumigate the new abode and are rewarded by the farmer

with a supper.[416]

[Midsummer fires in Silesia; scaring away the witches.]

In Silesia, from the south-eastern part of the Sudeten range and

north-westward as far as Lausitz, the mountains are ablaze with bonfires

on Midsummer Eve; and from the valleys and the plains round about

Leobschütz, Neustadt, Zülz, Oels, and other places answering fires

twinkle through the deepening gloom. While they are smouldering and

sending forth volumes of smoke across the fields, young men kindle

broom-stumps, soaked in pitch, at the bonfires and then, brandishing the

stumps, which emit showers of sparks, they chase one another or dance

with the girls round the burning pile. Shots, too, are fired, and shouts

raised. The fire, the smoke, the shots, and the shouts are all intended

to scare away the witches, who are let loose on this witching day, and

who would certainly work harm to the crops and the cattle, if they were

not deterred by these salutary measures. Mere contact with the fire

brings all sorts of blessings. Hence when the bonfire is burning low,

the lads leap over it, and the higher they bound, the better is the luck

in store for them. He who surpasses his fellows is the hero of the day

and is much admired by the village girls. It is also thought to be very

good for the eyes to stare steadily at the bonfire without blinking;

moreover he who does so will not drowse and fall asleep betimes in the

long winter evenings. On Midsummer Eve the windows and doors of houses

in Silesia are crowned with flowers, especially with the blue

cornflowers and the bright corn-cockles; in some villages long strings

of garlands and nosegays are stretched across the streets. The people

believe that on that night St. John comes down from heaven to bless the

flowers and to keep all evil things from house and home.[417]

[The Midsummer fires in Denmark and Norway; keeping off the witches; the

Midsummer fires in Sweden.]

In Denmark and Norway also Midsummer fires were kindled on St. John's

Eve on roads, open spaces, and hills. People in Norway thought that the

fires banished sickness from among the cattle.[418] Even yet the fires

are said to be lighted all over Norway on the night of June the

twenty-third, Midsummer Eve, Old Style. As many as fifty or sixty

bonfires may often be counted burning on the hills round Bergen.

Sometimes fuel is piled on rafts, ignited, and allowed to drift blazing

across the fiords in the darkness of night. The fires are thought to be

kindled in order to keep off the witches, who are said to be flying from

all parts that night to the Blocksberg, where the big witch lives.[419]

In Sweden the Eve of St. John (St. Hans) is the most joyous night of the

whole year. Throughout some parts of the country, especially in the

provinces of Bohus and Scania and in districts bordering on Norway, it

is celebrated by the frequent discharge of firearms and by huge

bonfires, formerly called Balder's Balefires (_Balder's Balar_), which

are kindled at dusk on hills and eminences and throw a glare of light

over the surrounding landscape. The people dance round the fires and

leap over or through them. In parts of Norrland on St. John's Eve the

bonfires are lit at the cross-roads. The fuel consists of nine different

sorts of wood, and the spectators cast into the flames a kind of

toad-stool (_Bäran_) in order to counteract the power of the Trolls and

other evil spirits, who are believed to be abroad that night; for at

that mystic season the mountains open and from their cavernous depths

the uncanny crew pours forth to dance and disport themselves for a time.

The peasants believe that should any of the Trolls be in the vicinity

they will shew themselves; and if an animal, for example a he or she

goat, happens to be seen near the blazing, crackling pile, the peasants

are firmly persuaded that it is no other than the Evil One in

person.[420] Further, it deserves to be remarked that in Sweden St.

John's Eve is a festival of water as well as of fire; for certain holy

springs are then supposed to be endowed with wonderful medicinal

virtues, and many sick people resort to them for the healing of their

infirmities.[421]

[The Midsummer fires in Switzerland and Austria; effigies burnt in the

fires; burning wheels rolled down hill.]

In Switzerland on Midsummer Eve fires are, or used to be, kindled on

high places in the cantons of Bern, Neuchatel, Valais, and Geneva.[422]

In Austria the midsummer customs and superstitions resemble those of

Germany. Thus in some parts of the Tyrol bonfires are kindled and

burning discs hurled into the air.[423] In the lower valley of the Inn a

taterdemalian effigy is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and

then burned. He is called the _Lotter_, which has been corrupted into

Luther. At Ambras, one of the villages where Martin Luther is thus

burned in effigy, they say that if you go through the village between

eleven and twelve on St. John's Night and wash yourself in three wells,

you will see all who are to die in the following year.[424] At Gratz on

St. John's Eve (the twenty-third of June) the common people used to make

a puppet called the _Tatermann_, which they dragged to the bleaching

ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire.[425] At

Reutte, in the Tyrol, people believed that the flax would grow as high

as they leaped over the midsummer bonfire, and they took pieces of

charred wood from the fire and stuck them in their flax-fields the same

night, leaving them there till the flax harvest had been got in.[426] In

Lower Austria fires are lit in the fields, commonly in front of a cross,

and the people dance and sing round them and throw flowers into the

flames. Before each handful of flowers is tossed into the fire, a set

speech is made; then the dance is resumed and the dancers sing in chorus

the last words of the speech. At evening bonfires are kindled on the

heights, and the boys caper round them, brandishing lighted torches

drenched in pitch. Whoever jumps thrice across the fire will not suffer

from fever within the year. Cart-wheels are often smeared with pitch,

ignited, and sent rolling and blazing down the hillsides.[427]

[Midsummer fires in Bohemia; wreaths thrown across the fire; uses made

of the singed wreaths; burning wheels rolled down hill; embers of the

fire stuck in fields, gardens, and houses as a talisman against

lightning and conflagration; use of mugwort; cattle protected against

witchcraft.]

All over Bohemia bonfires still burn on Midsummer Eve. In the afternoon

boys go about with handcarts from house to house collecting fuel, such

as sticks, brushwood, old besoms, and so forth. They make their request

at each house in rhyming verses, threatening with evil consequences the

curmudgeons who refuse them a dole. Sometimes the young men fell a tall

straight fir in the woods and set it up on a height, where the girls

deck it with nosegays, wreaths of leaves, and red ribbons. Then

brushwood is piled about it, and at nightfall the whole is set on fire.

While the flames break out, the young men climb the tree and fetch down

the wreaths which the girls had placed on it. After that, lads and

lasses stand on opposite sides of the fire and look at one another

through the wreaths to see whether they will be true to each other and

marry within the year. Also the girls throw the wreaths across the

flames to the men, and woe to the awkward swain who fails to catch the

wreath thrown him by his sweetheart. When the blaze has died down, each

couple takes hands, and leaps thrice across the fire. He or she who does

so will be free from ague throughout the year, and the flax will grow as

high as the young folks leap. A girl who sees nine bonfires on Midsummer

Eve will marry before the year is out. The singed wreaths are carried

home and carefully preserved throughout the year. During thunderstorms a

bit of the wreath is burned on the hearth with a prayer; some of it is

given to kine that are sick or calving, and some of it serves to

fumigate house and cattle-stall, that man and beast may keep hale and

well. Sometimes an old cartwheel is smeared with resin, ignited, and

sent rolling down the hill. Often the boys collect all the worn-out

besoms they can get hold of, dip them in pitch, and having set them on

fire wave them about or throw them high into the air. Or they rush down

the hillside in troops, brandishing the flaming brooms and shouting,

only however to return to the bonfire on the summit when the brooms have

burnt out. The stumps of the brooms and embers from the fire are

preserved and stuck in cabbage gardens to protect the cabbages from

caterpillars and gnats. Some people insert charred sticks and ashes from

the bonfire in their sown fields and meadows, in their gardens and the

roofs of their houses, as a talisman against lightning and foul weather;

or they fancy that the ashes placed in the roof will prevent any fire

from breaking out in the house. In some districts they crown or gird

themselves with mugwort while the midsummer fire is burning, for this is

supposed to be a protection against ghosts, witches, and sickness; in

particular, a wreath of mugwort is a sure preventive of sore eyes.

Sometimes the girls look at the bonfires through garlands of wild

flowers, praying the fire to strengthen their eyes and eyelids. She who

does this thrice will have no sore eyes all that year. In some parts of

Bohemia they used to drive the cows through the midsummer fire to guard

them against witchcraft.[428]

[The Midsummer fires in Moravia, Austrian Silesia, and the district of

Cracow; fire kindled by the friction of wood.]

The Germans of Moravia in like manner still light bonfires on open

grounds and high places on Midsummer Eve; and they kindle besoms in the

flames and then stick the charred stumps in the cabbage-fields as a

powerful protection against caterpillars. On the same mystic evening

Moravian girls gather flowers of nine sorts and lay them under their

pillow when they go to sleep; then they dream every one of him who is to

be her partner for life. For in Moravia maidens in their beds as well as

poets by haunted streams have their Midsummer Night's dreams.[429] In

Austrian Silesia the custom also prevails of lighting great bonfires on

hilltops on Midsummer Eve, and here too the boys swing blazing besoms or

hurl them high in the air, while they shout and leap and dance wildly.

Next morning every door is decked with flowers and birchen

saplings.[430] In the district of Cracow, especially towards the

Carpathian Mountains, great fires are kindled by the peasants in the

fields or on the heights at nightfall on Midsummer Eve, which among them

goes by the name of Kupalo's Night. The fire must be kindled by the

friction of two sticks. The young people dance round or leap over it;

and a band of sturdy fellows run a race with lighted torches, the winner

being rewarded with a peacock's feather, which he keeps throughout the

year as a distinction. Cattle also are driven round the fire in the

belief that this is a charm against pestilence and disease of every

sort.[431]

[The Midsummer fires among the Slavs of Russia; cattle protected against

witchcraft; the fires lighted by the friction of wood.]

The name of Kupalo's Night, applied in this part of Galicia to Midsummer

Eve, reminds us that we have now passed from German to Slavonic ground;

even in Bohemia the midsummer celebration is common to Slavs and

Germans. We have already seen that in Russia the summer solstice or Eve

of St. John is celebrated by young men and maidens, who jump over a

bonfire in couples carrying a straw effigy of Kupalo in their arms.[432]

In some parts of Russia an image of Kupalo is burnt or thrown into a

stream on St. John's Night.[433] Again, in some districts of Russia the

young folk wear garlands of flowers and girdles of holy herbs when they

spring through the smoke or flames; and sometimes they drive the cattle

also through the fire in order to protect the animals against wizards

and witches, who are then ravenous after milk.[434] In Little Russia a

stake is driven into the ground on St. John's Night, wrapt in straw, and

set on fire. As the flames rise the peasant women throw birchen boughs

into them, saying, "May my flax be as tall as this bough!"[435] In

Ruthenia the bonfires are lighted by a flame procured by the friction of

wood. While the elders of the party are engaged in thus "churning" the

fire, the rest maintain a respectful silence; but when the flame bursts

from the wood, they break forth into joyous songs. As soon as the

bonfires are kindled, the young people take hands and leap in pairs

through the smoke, if not through the flames; and after that the cattle

in their turn are driven through the fire.[436]

[The Midsummer fires in Prussia and Lithuania thought to protect against

witchcraft, thunder, hail, and cattle disease; the fire kindled by the

friction of wood.]

In many parts of Prussia and Lithuania great fires are kindled on

Midsummer Eve. All the heights are ablaze with them, as far as the eye

can see. The fires are supposed to be a protection against witchcraft,

thunder, hail, and cattle disease, especially if next morning the cattle

are driven over the places where the fires burned. Above all, the

bonfires ensure the farmer against the arts of witches, who try to steal

the milk from his cows by charms and spells. That is why next morning

you may see the young fellows who lit the bonfire going from house to

house and receiving jugfuls of milk. And for the same reason they stick

burs and mugwort on the gate or the hedge through which the cows go to

pasture, because that is supposed to be a preservative against

witchcraft.[437] In Masuren, a district of Eastern Prussia inhabited by

a branch of the Polish family, it is the custom on the evening of

Midsummer Day to put out all the fires in the village. Then an oaken

stake is driven into the ground and a wheel is fixed on it as on an

axle. This wheel the villagers, working by relays, cause to revolve with

great rapidity till fire is produced by friction. Every one takes home a

lighted brand from the new fire and with it rekindles the fire on the

domestic hearth.[438] In the sixteenth century Martin of Urzedow, a

Polish priest, denounced the heathen practices of the women who on St.

John's Eve (Midsummer Eve) kindled fires by the friction of wood,

danced, and sang songs in honour of the devil.[439]

[The Midsummer fires among the Letts of Russia; Midsummer Day in ancient

Rome.]

Among the Letts who inhabit the Baltic provinces of Russia the most

joyful festival of the year is held on Midsummer Day. The people drink

and dance and sing and adorn themselves and their houses with flowers

and branches. Chopped boughs of fir are strewn about the rooms, and

leaves are stuck in the roofs. In every farm-yard a birch tree is set

up, and every person of the name of John who enters the farm that day

must break off a twig from the tree and hang up on its branches in

return a small present for the family. When the serene twilight of the

summer night has veiled the landscape, bonfires gleam on all the hills,

and wild shouts of "Ligho! Ligho!" echo from the woods and fields. In

Riga the day is a festival of flowers. From all the neighbourhood the

peasants stream into the city laden with flowers and garlands. A market

of flowers is held in an open square and on the chief bridge over the

river; here wreaths of immortelles, which grow wild in the meadows and

woods, are sold in great profusion and deck the houses of Riga for long

afterwards. Roses, too, are now at the prime of their beauty, and masses

of them adorn the flower-stalls. Till far into the night gay crowds

parade the streets to music or float on the river in gondolas decked

with flowers.[440] So long ago in ancient Rome barges crowned with

flowers and crowded with revellers used to float down the Tiber on

Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June,[441] and no doubt the strains

of music were wafted as sweetly across the water to listeners on the

banks as they still are to the throngs of merrymakers at Riga.

[The Midsummer fires among the South Slavs.]

Bonfires are commonly kindled by the South Slavonian peasantry on

Midsummer Eve, and lads and lasses dance and shout round them in the

usual way. The very names of St. John's Day (_Ivanje_) and the St.

John's fires (_kries_) are said to act like electric sparks on the

hearts and minds of these swains, kindling a thousand wild, merry, and

happy fancies and ideas in their rustic breasts. At Kamenagora in

Croatia the herdsmen throw nine three-year old vines into the bonfire,

and when these burst into flames the young men who are candidates for

matrimony jump through the blaze. He who succeeds in leaping over the

fire without singeing himself will be married within the year. At

Vidovec in Croatia parties of two girls and one lad unite to kindle a

Midsummer bonfire and to leap through the flames; he or she who leaps

furthest will soonest wed. Afterwards lads and lasses dance in separate

rings, but the ring of lads bumps up against the ring of girls and

breaks it, and the girl who has to let go her neighbour's hand will

forsake her true love hereafter.[442] In Servia on Midsummer Eve

herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the sheepfolds and

cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow the torches to

burn out.[443]

[The Midsummer fires among the Magyars of Hungary.]

Among the Magyars in Hungary the midsummer fire-festival is marked by

the same features that meet us in so many parts of Europe. On Midsummer

Eve in many places it is customary to kindle bonfires on heights and to

leap over them, and from the manner in which the young people leap the

bystanders predict whether they will marry soon. At Nograd-Ludany the

young men and women, each carrying a truss of straw, repair to a meadow,

where they pile the straw in seven or twelve heaps and set it on fire.

Then they go round the fire singing, and hold a bunch of iron-wort in

the smoke, while they say, "No boil on my body, no sprain in my foot!"

This holding of the flowers over the flames is regarded, we are told, as

equally important with the practice of walking through the fire barefoot

and stamping it out. On this day also many Hungarian swineherds make

fire by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and through

the fire thus made they drive their pigs to preserve them from

sickness.[444] In villages on the Danube, where the population is a

cross between Magyar and German, the young men and maidens go to the

high banks of the river on Midsummer Eve; and while the girls post

themselves low down the slope, the lads on the height above set fire to

little wooden wheels and, after swinging them to and fro at the end of a

wand, send them whirling through the air to fall into the Danube. As he

does so, each lad sings out the name of his sweetheart, and she listens

well pleased down below.[445]

[The Midsummer fires among the Esthonians; the Midsummer fires in

Oesel.]

The Esthonians of Russia, who, like the Magyars, belong to the great

Turanian family of mankind, also celebrate the summer solstice in the

usual way. On the Eve of St. John all the people of a farm, a village,

or an estate, walk solemnly in procession, the girls decked with

flowers, the men with leaves and carrying bundles of straw under their

arms. The lads carry lighted torches or flaming hoops steeped in tar at

the top of long poles. Thus they go singing to the cattle-sheds, the

granaries, and so forth, and afterwards march thrice round the

dwelling-house. Finally, preceded by the shrill music of the bagpipes

and shawms, they repair to a neighbouring hill, where the materials of a

bonfire have been collected. Tar-barrels filled with combustibles are

hung on poles, or the trunk of a felled tree has been set up with a

great mass of juniper piled about it in the form of a pyramid. When a

light has been set to the pile, old and young gather about it and pass

the time merrily with song and music till break of day. Every one who

comes brings fresh fuel for the fire, and they say, "Now we all gather

together, where St. John's fire burns. He who comes not to St. John's

fire will have his barley full of thistles, and his oats full of weeds."

Three logs are thrown into the fire with special ceremony; in throwing

the first they say, "Gold of pleasure (a plant with yellow flowers) into

the fire!" in throwing the second they say, "Weeds to the unploughed

land!" but in throwing the third they cry, "Flax on my field!" The fire

is said to keep the witches from the cattle.[446] According to others,

it ensures that for the whole year the milk shall be "as pure as silver

and as the stars in the sky, and the butter as yellow as the sun and the

fire and the gold."[447] In the Esthonian island of Oesel, while they

throw fuel into the midsummer fire, they call out, "Weeds to the fire,

flax to the field," or they fling three billets into the flames, saying,

"Flax grow long!" And they take charred sticks from the bonfire home

with them and keep them to make the cattle thrive. In some parts of the

island the bonfire is formed by piling brushwood and other combustibles

round a tree, at the top of which a flag flies. Whoever succeeds in

knocking down the flag with a pole before it begins to burn will have

good luck. Formerly the festivities lasted till daybreak, and ended in

scenes of debauchery which looked doubly hideous by the growing light of

a summer morning.[448]

[The Midsummer fires among the Finns and Cheremiss of Russia.]

Still farther north, among a people of the same Turanian stock, we learn

from an eye-witness that Midsummer Night used to witness a sort of

witches' sabbath on the top of every hill in Finland. The bonfire was

made by setting up four tall birches in a square and piling the

intermediate space with fuel. Round the roaring flames the people sang

and drank and gambolled in the usual way.[449] Farther east, in the

valley of the Volga, the Cheremiss celebrate about midsummer a festival

which Haxthausen regarded as identical with the midsummer ceremonies of

the rest of Europe. A sacred tree in the forest, generally a tall and

solitary oak, marks the scene of the solemnity. All the males assemble

there, but no woman may be present. A heathen priest lights seven fires

in a row from north-west to south-east; cattle are sacrificed and their

blood poured in the fires, each of which is dedicated to a separate

deity. Afterwards the holy tree is illumined by lighted candles placed

on its branches; the people fall on their knees and with faces bowed to

the earth pray that God would be pleased to bless them, their children,

their cattle, and their bees, grant them success in trade, in travel,

and in the chase, enable them to pay the Czar's taxes, and so

forth.[450]

[The Midsummer fires in France; Bossuet on the Midsummer festival.]

When we pass from the east to the west of Europe we still find the

summer solstice celebrated with rites of the same general character.

Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the custom of

lighting bonfires at midsummer prevailed so commonly in France that

there was hardly a town or a village, we are told, where they were not

kindled.[451] Though the pagan origin of the custom may be regarded as

certain, the Catholic Church threw a Christian cloak over it by boldly

declaring that the bonfires were lit in token of the general rejoicing

at the birth of the Baptist, who opportunely came into the world at the

solstice of summer, just as his greater successor did at the solstice of

winter; so that the whole year might be said to revolve on the golden

hinges of these two great birthdays.[452] Writing in the seventeenth

century Bishop Bossuet expressly affirms this edifying theory of the

Midsummer bonfires, and he tells his catechumens that the Church herself

participated in the illumination, since in several dioceses, including

his own diocese of Meaux, a number of parishes kindled what were called

ecclesiastical fires for the purpose of banishing the superstitions

practised at the purely mundane bonfires. These superstitions, he goes

on to say, consisted in dancing round the fire, playing, feasting,

singing ribald songs, throwing herbs across the fire, gathering herbs at

noon or while fasting, carrying them on the person, preserving them

throughout the year, keeping brands or cinders of the fire, and other

similar practices.[453] However excellent the intentions of the

ecclesiastical authorities may have been, they failed of effecting their

purpose; for the superstitions as well as the bonfires survived in

France far into the nineteenth century, if indeed they are extinct even

now at the beginning of the twentieth. Writing in the latter part of the

nineteenth century Mr. Ch. Cuissard tells us that he himself witnessed

in Touraine and Poitou the superstitious practices which he describes as

follows: "The most credulous examine the ways in which the flame burns

and draw good or bad omens accordingly. Others, after leaping through

the flames crosswise, pass their little children through them thrice,

fully persuaded that the little ones will then be able to walk at once.

In some places the shepherds make their sheep tread the embers of the

extinct fire in order to preserve them from the foot-rot. Here you may

see about midnight an old woman grubbing among the cinders of the pyre

to find the hair of the Holy Virgin or Saint John, which she deems an

infallible specific against fever. There, another woman is busy plucking

the roots of the herbs which have been burned on the surface of the

ground; she intends to eat them, imagining that they are an infallible

preservative against cancer. Elsewhere a girl wears on her neck a flower

which the touch of St. John's fire has turned for her into a talisman,

and she is sure to marry within the year. Shots are fired at the tree

planted in the midst of the fire to drive away the demons who might

purpose to send sicknesses about the country. Seats are set round about

the bonfire, in order that the souls of dead relations may come and

enjoy themselves for a little with the living."[454]

[The Midsummer fires in Brittany; uses made of the charred sticks and

flowers.]

In Brittany, apparently, the custom of the Midsummer bonfires is kept up

to this day. Thus in Lower Brittany every town and every village still

lights its _tantad_ or bonfire on St. John's Night. When the flames have

died down, the whole assembly kneels round about the bonfire and an old

man prays aloud. Then they all rise and march thrice round the fire; at

the third turn they stop and every one picks up a pebble and throws it

on the burning pile. After that they disperse.[455] In Finistère the

bonfires of St. John's Day are kindled by preference in an open space

near a chapel of St. John; but if there is no such chapel, they are

lighted in the square facing the parish church and in some districts at

cross-roads. Everybody brings fuel for the fire, it may be a faggot, a

log, a branch, or an armful of gorse. When the vespers are over, the

parish priest sets a light to the pile. All heads are bared, prayers

recited, and hymns sung. Then the dancing begins. The young folk skip

round the blazing pile and leap over it, when the flames have died down.

If anybody makes a false step and falls or rolls in the hot embers, he

or she is greeted with hoots and retires abashed from the circle of

dancers. Brands are carried home from the bonfire to protect the houses

against lightning, conflagrations, and certain maladies and spells. The

precious talisman is carefully kept in a cupboard till St. John's Day of

the following year.[456] At Quimper, and in the district of Léon, chairs

used to be placed round the midsummer bonfire, that the souls of the

dead might sit on them and warm themselves at the blaze.[457] At Brest

on this day thousands of people used to assemble on the ramparts towards

evening and brandish lighted torches, which they swung in circles or

flung by hundreds into the air. The closing of the town gates put an end

to the spectacle, and the lights might be seen dispersing in all

directions like wandering will-o'-the-wisps.[458] In Upper Brittany the

materials for the midsummer bonfires, which generally consist of bundles

of furze and heath, are furnished by voluntary contributions, and piled

on the tops of hills round poles, each of which is surmounted by a

nosegay or a crown. This nosegay or crown is generally provided by a man

named John or a woman named Jean, and it is always a John or a Jean who

puts a light to the bonfire. While the fire is blazing the people dance

and sing round it, and when the flames have subsided they leap over the

glowing embers. Charred sticks from the bonfire are thrown into wells to

improve the water, and they are also taken home as a protection against

thunder.[459] To make them thoroughly effective, however, against

thunder and lightning you should keep them near your bed, between a bit

of a Twelfth Night cake and a sprig of boxwood which has been blessed on

Palm Sunday.[460] Flowers from the nosegay or crown which overhung the

fire are accounted charms against disease and pain, both bodily and

spiritual; hence girls hang them at their breast by a thread of scarlet

wool. In many parishes of Brittany the priest used to go in procession

with the crucifix and kindle the bonfire with his own hands; and farmers

were wont to drive their flocks and herds through the fire in order to

preserve them from sickness till midsummer of the following year. Also

it was believed that every girl who danced round nine of the bonfires

would marry within the year.[461]

[The Midsummer fires in Normandy; the fires as a protection against

witchcraft; the Brotherhood of the Green Wolf at Jumièges; pretence of

throwing the Green Wolf into the fire.]

In Normandy the midsummer fires have now almost disappeared, at least in

the district known as the Bocage, but they used to shine on every hill.

They were commonly made by piling brushwood, broom, and ferns about a

tall tree, which was decorated with a crown of moss and sometimes with

flowers. While they burned, people danced and sang round them, and young

folk leaped over the flames or the glowing ashes. In the valley of the

Orne the custom was to kindle the bonfire just at the moment when the

sun was about to dip below the horizon; and the peasants drove their

cattle through the fires to protect them against witchcraft, especially

against the spells of witches and wizards who attempted to steal the

milk and butter.[462] At Jumièges in Normandy, down to the first half of

the nineteenth century, the midsummer festival was marked by certain

singular features which bore the stamp of a very high antiquity. Every

year, on the twenty-third of June, the Eve of St. John, the Brotherhood

of the Green Wolf chose a new chief or master, who had always to be

taken from the hamlet of Conihout. On being elected, the new head of the

brotherhood assumed the title of the Green Wolf, and donned a peculiar

costume consisting of a long green mantle and a very tall green hat of a

conical shape and without a brim. Thus arrayed he stalked solemnly at

the head of the brothers, chanting the hymn of St. John, the crucifix

and holy banner leading the way, to a place called Chouquet. Here the

procession was met by the priest, precentors, and choir, who conducted

the brotherhood to the parish church. After hearing mass the company

adjourned to the house of the Green Wolf, where a simple repast, such as

is required by the church on fast-days, was served up to them. Then they

danced before the door till it was time to light the bonfire. Night

being come, the fire was kindled to the sound of hand-bells by a young

man and a young woman, both decked with flowers. As the flames rose, the

_Te Deum_ was sung, and a villager thundered out a parody in the Norman

dialect of the hymn _ut queant laxis_. Meantime the Green Wolf and his

brothers, with their hoods down on their shoulders and holding each

other by the hand, ran round the fire after the man who had been chosen

to be the Green Wolf of the following year. Though only the first and

the last man of the chain had a hand free, their business was to

surround and seize thrice the future Green Wolf, who in his efforts to

escape belaboured the brothers with a long wand which he carried. When

at last they succeeded in catching him they carried him to the burning

pile and made as if they would throw him on it. This ceremony over, they

returned to the house of the Green Wolf, where a supper, still of the

most meagre fare, was set before them. Up till midnight a sort of

religious solemnity prevailed. No unbecoming word might fall from the

lips of any of the company, and a censor, armed with a hand-bell, was

appointed to mark and punish instantly any infraction of the rule. But

at the stroke of twelve all this was changed. Constraint gave way to

license; pious hymns were replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the

shrill quavering notes of the village fiddle hardly rose above the roar

of voices that went up from the merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf.

Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, was celebrated by

the same personages with the same noisy gaiety. One of the ceremonies

consisted in parading, to the sound of musketry, an enormous loaf of

consecrated bread, which, rising in tiers, was surmounted by a pyramid

of verdure adorned with ribbons. After that the holy handbells,

deposited on the step of the altar, were entrusted as insignia of office

to the man who was to be the Green Wolf next year.[463]

[The Midsummer fires in Picardy.]

In the canton of Breteuil in Picardy (department of Oise) the priest

used to kindle the midsummer bonfire, and the people marched thrice

round it in procession. Some of them took ashes of the fire home with

them to protect the houses against lightning.[464] The custom is, or was

down to recent years, similar at Vorges, near Laon. An enormous pyre,

some fifty or sixty feet high, supported in the middle by a tall pole,

is constructed every year on the twenty-third of June, the Eve of St.

John. It stands at one end of the village, and all the inhabitants

contribute fuel to it: a cart goes round the village in the morning, by

order of the mayor, collecting combustibles from house to house: no one

would dream of refusing to comply with the customary obligation. In the

evening, after a service in honour of St. John has been performed in the

church, the clergy, the mayor, the municipal authorities, the rural

police, and the fire-brigade march in procession to the bonfire,

accompanied by the inhabitants and a crowd of idlers drawn by curiosity

from the neighbouring villages. After addressing the throng in a sermon,

to which they pay little heed, the parish priest sprinkles the pyre with

holy water, and taking a lighted torch from the hand of an assistant

sets fire to the pile. The enormous blaze, flaring up against the dark

sky of the summer night, is seen for many miles around, particularly

from the hill of Laon. When it has died down into a huge heap of glowing

embers and grey ashes, every one carries home a charred stick or some

cinders; and the fire-brigade, playing their hose on what remains,

extinguishes the smouldering fire. The people preserve the charred

sticks and cinders throughout the year, believing that these relics of

St John's bonfire have power to guard them from lightning and from

contagious diseases.[465] At Château-Thierry, a town of the department

of Aisne, between Paris and Reims, the custom of lighting bonfires and

dancing round them at the midsummer festival of St. John lasted down to

about 1850; the fires were kindled especially when June had been rainy,

and the people thought that the lighting of the bonfires would cause the

rain to cease.[466]

[The Midsummer fires in Beauce and Perche; the fires as a protection

against witchcraft.]

In Beauce and Perche, two neighbouring districts of France to the

south-west of Paris, the midsummer bonfires have nearly or wholly

disappeared, but formerly they were commonly kindled and went by the

name of the "fires of St. John." The site of the bonfire was either the

village square or beside the cross in the cemetery. Here a great pile of

faggots, brushwood, and grass was accumulated about a huge branch, which

bore at the top a crown of fresh flowers. The priest blessed the bonfire

and the people danced round it. When it blazed and crackled, the

bystanders thrust their heads into the puffs of smoke, in the belief

that it would preserve them from a multitude of ills; and when the fire

was burnt out, they rushed upon the charred embers and ashes and carried

them home, imagining that they had a secret virtue to guard their houses

from being struck by lightning or consumed by fire. Some of the Perche

farmers in the old days, not content with the public bonfire, used to

light little private bonfires in their farmyards and make all their

cattle pass through the smoke and flames for the purpose of protecting

them against witchcraft or disease.[467]

[The Midsummer fires in the Ardennes, the Vosges, and the Jura; the

Midsummer fires in Franche-Comté; the Midsummer fires in Berry and other

parts of Central France.]

In the department of the Ardennes every one was wont to contribute his

faggot to the midsummer bonfire, and the clergy marched at the head of

the procession to kindle it. Failure to light the fires would, in the

popular belief, have exposed the fields to the greatest danger. At Revin

the young folk, besides dancing round the fire to the strains of the

village fiddler, threw garlands of flowers across the flames to each

other.[468] In the Vosges it is still customary to kindle bonfires upon

the hill-tops on Midsummer Eve; the people believe that the fires help

to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure good crops.[469] In the

Jura Mountains the midsummer bonfires went by the name of _bâ_ or

_beau_. They were lit on the most conspicuous points of the

landscape.[470] Near St. Jean, in the Jura, it appears that at this

season young people still repair to the cross-roads and heights, and

there wave burning torches so as to present the appearance of fiery

wheels in the darkness.[471] In Franche-Comté, the province of France

which lies immediately to the west of the Jura mountains, the fires of

St. John still shone on the saint's day in several villages down to

recent years. They were generally lit on high ground and the young folks

of both sexes sang and danced round them, and sprang over the dying

flames.[472] In Bresse bonfires used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve (the

twenty-third of June) and the people danced about them in a circle.

Devout persons, particularly old women, circumambulated the fires

fourteen times, telling their beads and mumbling seven _Paters_ and

seven _Aves_ in the hope that thereby they would feel no pains in their

backs when they stooped over the sickle in the harvest field.[473] In

Berry, a district of Central France, the midsummer fire was lit on the

Eve of St. John and went by the name of the _jônée, joannée_, or

_jouannée_. Every family according to its means contributed faggots,

which were piled round a pole on the highest ground in the

neighbourhood. In the hamlets the office of kindling the fire devolved

on the oldest man, but in the towns it was the priest or the mayor who

discharged the duty. Here, as in Brittany, people supposed that a girl

who had danced round nine of the midsummer bonfires would marry within

the year. To leap several times over the fire was regarded as a sort of

purification which kept off sickness and brought good luck to the

leaper. Hence the nimble youth bounded through the smoke and flames, and

when the fire had somewhat abated parents jumped across it with their

children in their arms in order that the little ones might also partake

of its beneficent influence. Embers from the extinct bonfire were taken

home, and after being dipped in holy water were kept as a talisman

against all kinds of misfortune, but especially against lightning.[474]

The same virtue was ascribed to the ashes and charred sticks of the

midsummer bonfire in Périgord, where everybody contributed his share of

fuel to the pile and the whole was crowned with flowers, especially with

roses and lilies.[475] On the borders of the departments of Creuse and

Corrèze, in Central France, the fires of St. John used to be lit on the

Eve of the saint's day (the twenty-third of June); the custom seems to

have survived till towards the end of the nineteenth century. Men,

women, and children assembled round the fires, and the young people

jumped over them. Children were brought by their parents or elder

brothers into contact with the flames in the belief that this would save

them from fever. Older people girded themselves with stalks of rye taken

from a neighbouring field, because they fancied that by so doing they

would not grow weary in reaping the corn at harvest.[476]

[The Midsummer fires in Poitou.]

Bonfires were lit in almost all the hamlets of Poitou on the Eve of St.

John. People marched round them thrice, carrying a branch of walnut in

their hand. Shepherdesses and children passed sprigs of mullein

(_verbascum_) and nuts across the flames; the nuts were supposed to cure

toothache, and the mullein to protect the cattle from sickness and

sorcery. When the fire died down people took some of the ashes home with

them, either to keep them in the house as a preservative against thunder

or to scatter them on the fields for the purpose of destroying

corn-cockles and darnel. Stones were also placed round the fire, and it

was believed that the first to lift one of these stones next morning

would find under it the hair of St. John.[477] In Poitou also it used to

be customary on the Eve of St. John to trundle a blazing wheel wrapt in

straw over the fields to fertilize them.[478] This last custom is said

to be now extinct,[479] but it is still usual, or was so down to recent

years, in Poitou to kindle fires on this day at cross-roads or on the

heights. The oldest or youngest person present sets a light to the pile,

which consists of broom, gorse, and heath. A bright and crackling blaze

shoots up, but soon dies down, and over it the young folk leap. They

also throw stones into it, picking the stone according to the size of

the turnips that they wish to have that year. It is said that "the good

Virgin" comes and sits on the prettiest of the stones, and next morning

they see there her beautiful golden tresses. At Lussac, in Poitou, the

lighting of the midsummer bonfire is still an affair of some ceremony. A

pyramid of faggots is piled round a tree or tall pole on the ground

where the fair is held; the priest goes in procession to the spot and

kindles the pile. When prayers have been said and the clergy have

withdrawn, the people continue to march round the fire, telling their

beads, but it is not till the flames have begun to die down that the

youth jump over them. A brand from the midsummer bonfire is supposed to

be a preservative against thunder.[480]

[The Midsummer fires in the departments of Vienne and Deux-Sèvres and in

the provinces of Saintonge and Aunis.]

In the department of Vienne the bonfire was kindled by the oldest man,

and before the dance round the flames began it was the custom to pass

across them a great bunch of mullein (_bouillon blanc_) and a branch of

walnut, which next morning before sunrise were fastened over the door of

the chief cattle-shed.[481] A similar custom prevailed in the

neighbouring department of Deux-Sèvres; but here it was the priest who

kindled the bonfire, and old men used to put embers of the fire in their

wooden shoes as a preservative against many evils.[482] In some towns

and villages of Saintonge and Aunis, provinces of Western France now

mostly comprised in the department of Charente Inférieure, the fires of

St. John are still kindled on Midsummer Eve, but the custom is neither

so common nor carried out with so much pomp and ceremony as formerly.

Great quantities of wood used to be piled on an open space round about a

huge post or a tree stripped of its leaves and branches. Every one took

care to contribute a faggot to the pile, and the whole population

marched to the spot in procession with the crucifix at their head and

the priest bringing up the rear. The squire, or other person of high

degree, put the torch to the pyre, and the priest blessed it. In the

southern and eastern parts of Saintonge children and cattle were passed

through the smoke of the bonfires to preserve them from contagious

diseases, and when the fire had gone out the people scuffled for the

charred fragments of the great post, which they regarded as talismans

against thunder. Next morning, on Midsummer Day, every shepherdess in

the neighbourhood was up very early, for the first to drive her sheep

over the blackened cinders and ashes of the great bonfire was sure to

have the best flock all that year. Where the shepherds shrunk from

driving their flocks through the smoke and flames of the bonfire they

contented themselves with marking the hinder-quarters of the animals

with a broom which had been blackened in the ashes.[483]

[The Midsummer fires in Southern France; Midsummer festival of fire and

water in Provence; bathing in the sea at Midsummer; temporary Midsummer

kings at Aix and Marseilles.]

In the mountainous part of Comminges, a province of Southern France, now

comprised in the department of Haute Garonne, the midsummer fire is made

by splitting open the trunk of a tall tree, stuffing the crevice with

shavings, and igniting the whole. A garland of flowers is fastened to

the top of the tree, and at the moment when the fire is lighted the man

who was last married has to climb up a ladder and bring the flowers

down. In the flat parts of the same district the materials of the

midsummer bonfires consist of fuel piled in the usual way; but they must

be put together by men who have been married since the last midsummer

festival, and each of these benedicts is obliged to lay a wreath of

flowers on the top of the pile.[484] At the entrance of the valley of

Aran young people set up on the banks of the Garonne a tree covered with

ribbons and garlands; at the end of a year the withered tree and faded

flowers furnish excellent fuel. So on the Eve of St. John the villagers

assemble, and an old man or a child kindles the fire which is to consume

tree and garlands together. While the blaze lasts the people sing and

dance; and the burnt tree is then replaced by another which will suffer

the same fate after the lapse of a year.[485] In some districts of the

French Pyrenees it is deemed necessary to leap nine times over the

midsummer fire if you would be assured of prosperity.[486] A traveller

in Southern France at the beginning of the nineteenth century tells us

that "the Eve of St. John is also a day of joy for the Provençals. They

light great fires and the young folk leap over them. At Aix they shower

squibs and crackers on the passers-by, which has often had disagreeable

consequences. At Marseilles they drench each other with scented water,

which is poured from the windows or squirted from little syringes; the

roughest jest is to souse passers-by with clean water, which gives rise

to loud bursts of laughter."[487] At Draguignan, in the department of

Var, fires used to be lit in every street on the Eve of St. John, and

the people roasted pods of garlic at them; the pods were afterwards

distributed to every family. Another diversion of the evening was to

pour cans of water from the houses on the heads of people in the

streets.[488] In Provence the midsummer fires are still popular.

Children go from door to door begging for fuel, and they are seldom sent

empty away. Formerly the priest, the mayor, and the aldermen used to

walk in procession to the bonfire, and even deigned to light it; after

which the assembly marched thrice round the burning pile, while the

church bells pealed and rockets fizzed and sputtered in the air. Dancing

began later, and the bystanders threw water on each other. At Ciotat,

while the fire was blazing, the young people plunged into the sea and

splashed each other vigorously. At Vitrolles they bathed in a pond in

order that they might not suffer from fever during the year, and at

Saintes-Maries they watered the horses to protect them from the

itch.[489] At Aix a nominal king, chosen from among the youth for his

skill in shooting at a popinjay, presided over the festival. He selected

his own officers, and escorted by a brilliant train marched to the

bonfire, kindled it, and was the first to dance round it. Next day he

distributed largesse to his followers. His reign lasted a year, during

which he enjoyed certain privileges. He was allowed to attend the mass

celebrated by the commander of the Knights of St. John on St. John's

Day: the right of hunting was accorded to him; and soldiers might not be

quartered in his house. At Marseilles also on this day one of the guilds

chose a king of the _badache_ or double axe; but it does not appear that

he kindled the bonfire, which is said to have been lighted with great

ceremony by the préfet and other authorities.[490]

[The Midsummer fires in Belgium; bonfires on St. Peter's Day in Brabant;

the King and Queen of the Roses; effigies burnt in the Midsummer fires.]

In Belgium the custom of kindling the midsummer bonfires has long

disappeared from the great cities, but it is still kept up in rural

districts and small towns of Brabant, Flanders, and Limburg. People leap

across the fires to protect themselves against fever, and in eastern

Flanders women perform similar leaps for the purpose of ensuring an easy

delivery. At Termonde young people go from door to door collecting fuel

for the fires and reciting verses, in which they beg the inmates to give

them "wood of St. John" and to keep some wood for St. Peter's Day (the

twenty-ninth of June); for in Belgium the Eve of St. Peter's Day is

celebrated by bonfires and dances exactly like those which commemorate

St. John's Eve. The ashes of the St. John's fires are deemed by Belgian

peasants an excellent remedy for consumption, if you take a spoonful or

two of them, moistened with water, day by day. People also burn vervain

in the fires, and they say that in the ashes of the plant you may find,

if you look for it, the "Fool's Stone."[491] In many parts of Brabant

St. Peter's bonfire used to be much larger than that of his rival St.

John. When it had burned out, both sexes engaged in a game of ball, and

the winner became the King of Summer or of the Ball and had the right to

choose his Queen. Sometimes the winner was a woman, and it was then her

privilege to select her royal mate. This pastime was well known at

Louvain and it continued to be practised at Grammont and Mespelaer down

to the second half of the nineteenth century. At Mespelaer, which is a

village near Termonde, a huge pile of eglantine, reeds, and straw was

collected in a marshy meadow for the bonfire; and next evening after

vespers the young folk who had lit it assembled at the "Good Life"

tavern to play the game. The winner was crowned with a wreath of roses,

and the rest danced and sang in a ring about him. At Grammont, while the

bonfire was lit and the dances round it took place on St. Peter's Eve,

the festival of the "Crown of Roses" was deferred till the following

Sunday. The young folk arranged among themselves beforehand who should

be King and Queen of the Roses: the rosy wreaths were hung on cords

across the street: the dancers danced below them, and at a given moment

the wreaths fell on the heads of the chosen King and Queen, who had to

entertain their fellows at a feast. According to some people the fires

of St. Peter, like those of St. John, were lighted in order to drive

away dragons.[492] In French Flanders down to 1789 a straw figure

representing a man was always burned in the midsummer bonfire, and the

figure of a woman was burned on St. Peter's Day.[493] In Belgium people

jump over the midsummer bonfires as a preventive of colic, and they keep

the ashes at home to hinder fire from breaking out.[494]

[The Midsummer fires in England; Stow's description of the Midsummer

fires in London; the Midsummer fires at Eton.]

The custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has been observed in many

parts of our own country. "On the Vigil of Saint John the Baptist,

commonly called Midsummer Eve, it was usual in most country places, and

also in towns and cities, for the inhabitants, both old and young, and

of both sexes, to meet together, and make merry by the side of a large

fire made in the middle of the street, or in some open and convenient

place, over which the young men frequently leaped by way of frolic, and

also exercised themselves with various sports and pastimes, more

especially with running, wrestling, and dancing. These diversions they

continued till midnight, and sometimes till cock-crowing."[495] In the

streets of London the midsummer fires were lighted in the time of Queen

Elizabeth down to the end of the sixteenth century, as we learn from

Stow's description, which runs thus: "In the months of June and July, on

the vigils of festival days, and on the same festival days in the

evenings after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the

streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them; the wealthier

sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out

tables on the vigils furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on

the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they

would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry

with them in great familiarity, praising God for His benefits bestowed

on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst

neighbours that being before at controversy, were there, by the labour

of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and

also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the

air. On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the

Apostles, every man's door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel,

St John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with

garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning

in them all the night; some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought,

containing hundreds of lamps alight at once, which made a goodly show,

namely, in New Fish Street, Thames Street, etc."[496] In the sixteenth

century the Eton boys used to kindle a bonfire on the east side of the

church both on St John's Day and on St. Peter's Day.[497] Writing in the

second half of the seventeenth century, the antiquary John Aubrey tells

us that bonfires were still kindled in many places on St. John's Night,

but that the civil wars had thrown many of these old customs out of

fashion. Wars, he adds, extinguish superstition as well as religion and

laws, and there is nothing like gunpowder for putting phantoms to

flight.[498]

[The Midsummer fires in the north of England; the Midsummer fires in

Northumberland.]

In the north of England these fires used to be lit in the open streets.

Young and old gathered round them, and while the young leaped over the

fires and engaged in games, their elders looked on and probably

remembered with regret the days when they used to foot it as nimbly.

Sometimes the fires were kindled on the tops of high hills. The people

also carried firebrands about the fields.[499] The custom of kindling

bonfires on Midsummer Eve prevailed all over Cumberland down to the

second half of the eighteenth century.[500] In Northumberland the custom

seems to have lasted into the first quarter of the nineteenth century;

the fires were lit in the villages and on the tops of high hills, and

the people sported and danced round them.[501] Moreover, the villagers

used to run with burning brands round their fields and to snatch ashes

from a neighbour's fire, saying as they did so, "We have the flower (or

flour) of the wake."[502] At Sandhill bonfires were kindled on the Eve

of St. Peter as well as on Midsummer Eve; the custom is attested for the

year 1575, when it was described as ancient.[503] We are told that "on

Midsummer's eve, reckoned according to the old style, it was formerly

the custom of the inhabitants, young and old, not only of Whalton, but

of most of the adjacent villages, to collect a large cartload of whins

and other combustible materials, which was dragged by them with great

rejoicing (a fiddler being seated on the top of the cart) into the

village and erected into a pile. The people from the surrounding country

assembled towards evening, when it was set on fire; and whilst the young

danced around it, the elders looked on smoking their pipes and drinking

their beer, until it was consumed. There can be little doubt that this

curious old custom dates from a very remote antiquity." In a law-suit,

which was tried in 1878, the rector of Whalton gave evidence of the

constant use of the village green for the ceremony since 1843. "The

bonfire," he said, "was lighted a little to the north-east of the well

at Whalton, and partly on the footpath, and people danced round it and

jumped through it. That was never interrupted." The Rev. G.R. Hall,

writing in 1879, says that "the fire festivals or bonfires of the summer

solstice at the Old Midsummer until recently were commemorated on

Christenburg Crags and elsewhere by leaping through and dancing round

the fires, as those who have been present have told me."[504] Down to

the early part of the nineteenth century bonfires called Beal-fires used

to be lit on Midsummer Eve all over the wolds in the East Riding of

Yorkshire.[505]

[The Midsummer fires in Herefordshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, and

Cornwall; the Cornish fires on Midsummer Eve and St. Peter's Eve.]

In Herefordshire and Somersetshire the peasants used to make fires in

the fields on Midsummer Eve "to bless the apples."[506] In Devonshire

the custom of leaping over the midsummer fires was also observed.[507]

"In Cornwall, the festival fires, called bonfires, are kindled on the

Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter's day; and Midsummer is thence,

in the Cornish tongue, called _Goluan_, which signifies both light and

rejoicing. At these fires the Cornish attend with lighted torches,

tarred and pitched at the end, and make their perambulations round their

fires, going from village to village and carrying their torches before

them; this is certainly the remains of Druid superstition; for, _Faces

praeferre_, to carry lighted torches was reckoned a kind of gentilism,

and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils."[508] At

Penzance and elsewhere in the county the people danced and sang about

the bonfires on Midsummer Eve. On Whiteborough, a large tumulus near

Launceston, a huge bonfire used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve; a tall

summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the centre of the

bonfire.[509] The Cornish fires at this season appear to have been

commonly lit on high and conspicuous hills, such as Tregonan, Godolphin,

Carnwarth, and Cam Brea. When it grew dusk on Midsummer Eve, old men

would hobble away to some height whence they counted the fires and drew

a presage from their number.[510] "It is the immemorial usage in

Penzance, and the neighbouring towns and villages, to kindle bonfires

and torches on Midsummer-eve; and on Midsummer-day to hold a fair on

Penzance quay, where the country folks assemble from the adjoining

parishes in great numbers to make excursions on the water. St. Peter's

Eve (the twenty-eighth of June) is distinguished by a similar display of

bonfires and torches, although the 'quay-fair' on St. Peter's-day (the

twenty-ninth of June), has been discontinued upwards of forty years. On

these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large

bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in

Penzance. On either side of this line young men and women pass up and

down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of

folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between

three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those

of the tar-barrels. Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm,

are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets. In St.

Just, and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their

fathers' employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with

gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same

substance. As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same

little batteries serve for many years. On these nights, Mount's Bay has

a most animating appearance, although not equal to what was annually

witnessed at the beginning of the present century, when the whole coast,

from the Land's End to the Lizard, wherever a town or a village existed,

was lighted up with these stationary or moving fires. In the early part

of the evening, children may be seen wearing wreaths of flowers--a

custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these

ornaments when they danced around the fires. At the close of the

fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly

from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last

few years, to join hand in hand, forming a long string, and run through

the streets, playing 'thread the needle,' heedless of the fireworks

showered upon them, and oftentimes leaping over the yet glowing embers.

I have on these occasions seen boys following one another, jumping

through flames higher than themselves."[511]

[The Midsummer fires in Wales and the Isle of Man; burning wheel rolled

down hill.]

In Wales the midsummer fires were kindled on St. John's Eve and on St.

John's Day. Three or nine different kinds of wood and charred faggots

carefully preserved from the last midsummer were deemed necessary to

build the bonfire, which was generally done on rising ground. Various

herbs were thrown into the blaze; and girls with bunches of three or

nine different kinds of flowers would take the hands of boys, who wore

flowers in their buttonholes and hats, and together the young couples

would leap over the fires. On the same two midsummer days roses and

wreaths of flowers were hung over the doors and windows. "Describing a

midsummer fire, an old inhabitant, born in 1809, remembered being taken

to different hills in the Vale of Glamorgan to see festivities in which

people from all parts of the district participated. She was at that time

about fourteen, and old enough to retain a vivid recollection of the

circumstances. People conveyed trusses of straw to the top of the hill,

where men and youths waited for the contributions. Women and girls were

stationed at the bottom of the hill. Then a large cart-wheel was thickly

swathed with straw, and not an inch of wood was left in sight. A pole

was inserted through the centre of the wheel, so that long ends extended

about a yard on each side. If any straw remained, it was made up into

torches at the top of tall sticks. At a given signal the wheel was

lighted, and sent rolling downhill. If this fire-wheel went out before

it reached the bottom of the hill, a very poor harvest was promised. If

it kept lighted all the way down, and continued blazing for a long time,

the harvest would be exceptionally abundant. Loud cheers and shouts

accompanied the progress of the wheel."[512] At Darowen in Wales small

bonfires were kindled on Midsummer Eve.[513] On the same day people in

the Isle of Man were wont to light fires to the windward of every field,

so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle

and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.[514]

[The Midsummer fires in Ireland; passage of people and cattle through

the fires; cattle driven through the fire; ashes used to fertilize the

fields; the White Horse at the Midsummer fire.]

A writer of the last quarter of the seventeenth century tells us that in

Ireland, "on the Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter, they always

have in every town a bonfire, late in the evenings, and carry about

bundles of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long,

and flame better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to

the distant beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole

country was on fire."[515] Another writer says of the South of Ireland:

"On Midsummer's Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes

with bonfires; and round these they carry numerous torches, shouting and

dancing, which affords a beautiful sight."[516] An author who described

Ireland in the first quarter of the eighteenth century says: "On the

vigil of St. John the Baptist's Nativity, they make bonfires, and run

along the streets and fields with wisps of straw blazing on long poles

to purify the air, which they think infectious, by believing all the

devils, spirits, ghosts, and hobgoblins fly abroad this night to hurt

mankind."[517] Another writer states that he witnessed the festival in

Ireland in 1782: "At the house where I was entertained, it was told me,

that we should see, at midnight, the most singular sight in Ireland,

which was the lighting of fires in honour of the sun. Accordingly,

exactly at midnight, the fires began to appear; and taking the advantage

of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely extended view,

I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the fires burning on

every eminence which the country afforded. I had a farther satisfaction

in learning, from undoubted authority, that the people danced round the

fires, and at the close went through these fires, and made their sons

and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through the fire; and

the whole was conducted with religious solemnity."[518] That the custom

prevailed in full force as late as 1867 appears from a notice in a

newspaper of that date, which runs thus: "The old pagan fire-worship

still survives in Ireland, though nominally in honour of St. John. On

Sunday night bonfires were observed throughout nearly every county in

the province of Leinster. In Kilkenny, fires blazed on every hillside at

intervals of about a mile. There were very many in the Queen's County,

also in Kildare and Wexford. The effect in the rich sunset appeared to

travellers very grand. The people assemble, and dance round the fires,

the children jump through the flames, and in former times live coals

were carried into the corn-fields to prevent blight."[519] In County

Leitrim on St. John's Eve, which is called Bonfire Day, fires are still

lighted after dusk on the hills and along the sides of the roads.[520]

All over Kerry the same thing continues to be done, though not so

commonly as of old. Small fires were made across the road, and to drive

through them brought luck for the year. Cattle were also driven through

the fires. On Lettermore Island, in South Connemara, some of the ashes

from the midsummer bonfire are thrown on the fields to fertilize

them.[521] One writer informs us that in Munster and Connaught a bone

must always be burned in the fire; for otherwise the people believe that

the fire will bring no luck. He adds that in many places sterile beasts

and human beings are passed through the fire, and that as a boy he

himself jumped through the fire "for luck."[522] An eye-witness has

described as follows a remarkable ceremony observed in Ireland on

Midsummer Eve: "When the fire burned for some hours, and got low, an

indispensable part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the

peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown across the

sparkling embers; while a wooden frame, of some eight feet long, with a

horse's head fixed to one end, and a large white sheet thrown over it

concealing the wood and the man on whose head it was carried, made its

appearance. This was greeted with loud shouts of 'The white horse!' and

having been safely carried by the skill of its bearer several times

through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran

screaming and laughing in every direction. I asked what the horse was

meant for, and was told that it represented 'all cattle.'"[523]

[Lady Wilde's account of the Midsummer fires in Ireland.]

Lady Wilde's account of the midsummer festival in Ireland is picturesque

and probably correct in substance, although she does not cite her

authorities. As it contains some interesting features which are not

noticed by the other writers on Ireland whom I have consulted, I will

quote the greater part of it in full. "In ancient times," she says, "the

sacred fire was lighted with great ceremony on Midsummer Eve; and on

that night all the people of the adjacent country kept fixed watch on

the western promontory of Howth, and the moment the first flash was seen

from that spot the fact of ignition was announced with wild cries and

cheers repeated from village to village, when all the local fires began

to blaze, and Ireland was circled by a cordon of flame rising up from

every hill. Then the dance and song began round every fire, and the wild

hurrahs filled the air with the most frantic revelry. Many of these

ancient customs are still continued, and the fires are still lighted on

St. John's Eve on every hill in Ireland. When the fire has burned down

to a red glow the young men strip to the waist and leap over or through

the flames; this is done backwards and forwards several times, and he

who braves the greatest blaze is considered the victor over the powers

of evil, and is greeted with tremendous applause. When the fire burns

still lower, the young girls leap the flame, and those who leap clean

over three times back and forward will be certain of a speedy marriage

and good luck in after-life, with many children. The married women then

walk through the lines of the burning embers; and when the fire is

nearly burnt and trampled down, the yearling cattle are driven through

the hot ashes, and their back is singed with a lighted hazel twig. These

rods are kept safely afterwards, being considered of immense power to

drive the cattle to and from the watering places. As the fire diminishes

the shouting grows fainter, and the song and the dance commence; while

professional story-tellers narrate tales of fairy-land, or of the good

old times long ago, when the kings and princes of Ireland dwelt amongst

their own people, and there was food to eat and wine to drink for all

comers to the feast at the king's house. When the crowd at length

separate, every one carries home a brand from the fire, and great virtue

is attached to the lighted _brone_ which is safely carried to the house

without breaking or falling to the ground. Many contests also arise

amongst the young men; for whoever enters his house first with the

sacred fire brings the good luck of the year with him."[524]

[Holy water resorted to on Midsummer Eve in Ireland.]

In Ireland, as elsewhere, water was also apparently thought to acquire a

certain mystical virtue at midsummer. "At Stoole, near Downpatrick,

there is a ceremony commencing at twelve o'clock at night on Midsummer

Eve. Its sacred mount is consecrated to St. Patrick; the plain contains

three wells, to which the most extraordinary virtues are attributed.

Here and there are heaps of stones, around some of which appear great

numbers of people, running with as much speed as possible; around others

crowds of worshippers kneel with bare legs and feet as an indispensable

part of the penance. The men, without coats, with handkerchiefs on their

heads instead of hats, having gone seven times round each heap, kiss the

ground, cross themselves, and proceed to the hill; here they ascend, on

their bare knees, by a path so steep and rugged that it would be

difficult to walk up. Many hold their hands clasped at the back of their

necks, and several carry large stones on their heads. Having repeated

this ceremony seven times, they go to what is called St. Patrick's

Chair, which are two great flat stones fixed upright in the hill; here

they cross and bless themselves as they step in between these stones,

and, while repeating prayers, an old man, seated for the purpose, turns

them round on their feet three times, for which he is paid; the devotee

then goes to conclude his penance at a pile of stones, named the Altar.

While this busy scene is continued by the multitude, the wells and

streams issuing from them are thronged by crowds of halt, maimed, and

blind, pressing to wash away their infirmities with water consecrated by

their patron saint, and so powerful is the impression of its efficacy on

their minds, that many of those who go to be healed, and who are not

totally blind, or altogether crippled, really believe for a time that

they are by means of its miraculous virtues perfectly restored."[525]

[The Midsummer fires in Scotland; fires on St. Peter's Day (the

twenty-ninth of June).]

In Scotland the traces of midsummer fires are few. We are told by a

writer of the eighteenth century that "the midsummer-even fire, a relict

of Druidism," was kindled in some parts of the county of Perth.[526]

Another writer of the same period, describing what he calls the

Druidical festivals of the Highlanders, says that "the least

considerable of them is that of midsummer. In the Highlands of

Perthshire there are some vestiges of it. The cowherd goes three times

round the fold, according to the course of the sun, with a burning torch

in his hand. They imagined this rite had a tendency to purify their

herds and flocks, and to prevent diseases. At their return the landlady

makes an entertainment for the cowherd and his associates."[527] In the

northeast of Scotland, down to the latter half of the eighteenth

century, farmers used to go round their lands with burning torches about

the middle of June.[528] On the hill of Cairnshee, in the parish of

Durris, Kincardineshire, the herdsmen of the country round about

annually kindle a bonfire at sunset on Midsummer Day (the twenty-fourth

of June); the men or lads collect the fuel and push each other through

the smoke and flames. The custom is kept up through the benefaction of a

certain Alexander Hogg, a native of the parish, who died about 1790 and

left a small sum for the maintenance of a midsummer bonfire on the spot,

because as a boy he had herded cattle on the hill. We may conjecture

that in doing so he merely provided for the continuance of an old custom

which he himself had observed in the same place in his youth.[529] At

the village of Tarbolton in Ayrshire a bonfire has been annually kindled

from time immemorial on the evening of the first Monday after the

eleventh of June. A noted cattle-market was formerly held at the fair on

the following day. The bonfire is still lit at the gloaming by the lads

and lasses of the village on a high mound or hillock just outside of the

village. Fuel for it is collected by the lads from door to door. The

youth dance round the fire and leap over the fringes of it. The many

cattle-drovers who used to assemble for the fair were wont to gather

round the blazing pile, smoke their pipes, and listen to the young folk

singing in chorus on the hillock. Afterwards they wrapped themselves in

their plaids and slept round the bonfire, which was intended to last all

night.[530] Thomas Moresin of Aberdeen, a writer of the sixteenth

century, says that on St. Peter's Day, which is the twenty-ninth of

June, the Scotch ran about at night with lighted torches on mountains

and high grounds, "as Ceres did when she roamed the whole earth in

search of Proserpine";[531] and towards the end of the eighteenth

century the parish minister of Loudoun, a district of Ayrshire whose

"bonny woods and braes" have been sung by Burns, wrote that "the custom

still remains amongst the herds and young people to kindle fires in the

high grounds in honour of Beltan. _Beltan_, which in Gaelic signifies

_Baal_, or _Bel's-fire_, was antiently the time of this solemnity. It is

now kept on St. Peter's day."[532]

[The Midsummer fires in Spain and the Azores; divination on Midsummer

Eve in the Azores; the Midsummer fires in Corsica and Sardinia.]

All over Spain great bonfires called _lumes_ are still lit on Midsummer

Eve. They are kept up all night, and the children leap over them in a

certain rhythmical way which is said to resemble the ancient dances. On

the coast, people at this season plunge into the sea; in the inland

districts the villagers go and roll naked in the dew of the meadows,

which is supposed to be a sovereign preservative against diseases of the

skin. On this evening, too, girls who would pry into the future put a

vessel of water on the sill outside their window; and when the clocks

strike twelve, they break an egg in the water and see, or fancy they

see, in the shapes assumed by the pulp, as it blends with the liquid,

the likeness of future bridegrooms, castles, coffins, and so forth. But

generally, as might perhaps have been anticipated, the obliging egg

exhibits the features of a bridegroom.[533] In the Azores, also,

bonfires are lit on Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve), and boys jump over

them for luck. On that night St. John himself is supposed to appear in

person and bless all the seas and waters, driving out the devils and

demons who had been disporting themselves in them ever since the second

day of November; that is why in the interval between the second of

November and the twenty-third of June nobody will bathe in the sea or in

a hot spring. On Midsummer Eve, too, you can always see the devil, if

you will go into a garden at midnight. He is invariably found standing

near a mustard-plant. His reason for adopting this posture has not been

ascertained; perhaps in the chilly air of the upper world he is

attracted by the genial warmth of the mustard. Various forms of

divination are practised by people in the Azores on Midsummer Eve. Thus

a new-laid egg is broken into a glass of water, and the shapes which it

assumes foreshadow the fate of the person concerned. Again, seven

saucers are placed in a row, filled respectively with water, earth,

ashes, keys, a thimble, money, and grass, which things signify travel,

death, widowhood, housekeeping, spinsterhood, riches, and farming. A

blindfolded person touches one or other of the saucers with a wand and

so discovers his or her fate. Again, three broad beans are taken; one is

left in its skin, one is half peeled, and the third is peeled outright.

The three denote respectively riches, competence, and poverty. They are

hidden and searched for; and he who finds one of them knows accordingly

whether he will be rich, moderately well-off, or poor. Again, girls take

slips of paper and write the names of young men twice over on them.

These they fold up and crumple and place one set under their pillows and

the other set in a saucer full of water. In the morning they draw one

slip of paper from under their pillow, and see whether one in the water

has opened out. If the names on the two slips are the same, it is the

name of her future husband. Young men do the same with girls' names.

Once more, if a girl rises at sunrise, goes out into the street, and

asks the first passer-by his Christian name, that will be her husband's

name.[534] Some of these modes of divination resemble those which are or

used to be practised in Scotland at Hallowe'en.[535] In Corsica on the

Eve of St. John the people set fire to the trunk of a tree or to a whole

tree, and the young men and maidens dance round the blaze, which is

called _fucaraia_.[536] We have seen that at Ozieri, in Sardinia, a

great bonfire is kindled on St. John's Eve, and that the young people

dance round it.[537]

[The Midsummer fires in the Abruzzi; bathing on Midsummer Eve in the

Abruzzi; the Midsummer fires in Sicily; the witches at Midsummer.]

Passing to Italy, we find that the midsummer fires are still lighted on

St. John's Eve in many parts of the Abruzzi. They are commonest in the

territory which was inhabited in antiquity by the Vestini; they are

rarer in the land of the ancient Marsi, and they disappear entirely in

the lower valley of the Sangro. For the most part, the fires are fed

with straw and dry grass, and are kindled in the fields near the

villages or on high ground. As they blaze up, the people dance round or

over them. In leaping across the flames the boys cry out, "St. John,

preserve my thighs and legs!" Formerly it used to be common to light the

bonfires also in the towns in front of churches of St. John, and the

remains of the sacred fire were carried home by the people; but this

custom has mostly fallen into disuse. However, at Celano the practice is

still kept up of taking brands and ashes from the bonfires to the

houses, although the fires are no longer kindled in front of the

churches, but merely in the streets.[538] In the Abruzzi water also is

supposed to acquire certain marvellous and beneficent properties on St.

John's Night. Hence many people bathe or at least wash their faces and

hands in the sea or a river at that season, especially at the moment of

sunrise. Such a bath is said to be an excellent cure for diseases of the

skin. At Castiglione a Casauria the people, after washing in the river

or in springs, gird their waists and wreath their brows with sprigs of

briony in order to keep them from aches and pains.[539] In various parts

of Sicily, also, fires are kindled on Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve),

the twenty-third of June. On the Madonie mountains, in the north of the

island, the herdsmen kindle them at intervals, so that the crests of the

mountains are seen ablaze in the darkness for many miles. About

Acireale, on the east coast of the island, the bonfires are lit by boys,

who jump over them. At Chiaromonte the witches that night acquire

extraordinary powers; hence everybody then puts a broom outside of his

house, because a broom is an excellent protective against

witchcraft.[540] At Orvieto the midsummer fires were specially excepted

from the prohibition directed against bonfires in general.[541]

[The Midsummer fires in Malta ]

In Malta also the people celebrate Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve) "by

kindling great fires in the public streets, and giving their children

dolls to carry in their arms on this day, in order to make good the

prophecy respecting the Baptist, _Multi in nativitate ejus gaudebunt_.

Days and even weeks before this festival, groups of children are seen

going out into the country fields to gather straw, twigs, and all sorts

of other combustibles, which they store up for St. John's Eve. On the

night of the twenty-third of June, the day before the festival of the

Saint, great fires are kindled in the streets, squares, and market

places of the towns and villages of the Island, and as fire after fire

blazes out of the darkness of that summer night, the effect is

singularly striking. These fires are sometimes kept up for hours, being

continually fed by the scores of bystanders, who take great delight in

throwing amidst the flames some old rickety piece of furniture which

they consider as lumber in their houses. Lots of happy and reckless

children, and very often men, are seen merrily leaping in succession

over and through the crackling flames. At the time of the Order of St.

John of Jerusalem, the Grand Master himself, soon after the _Angelus_,

used to leave his palace, accompanied by the Grand Prior, the Bishop,

and two bailiffs, to set fire to some pitch barrels which were placed

for the occasion in the square facing the sacred Hospital. Great crowds

used to assemble here in order to assist at this ceremony. The setting

ablaze of the five casks, and later on of the eight casks, by the Grand

Master, was a signal for the others to kindle their fires in the

different parts of the town."[542]

[The Midsummer fires in Greece; the Midsummer fires in Macedonia and

Albania.]

In Greece, the custom of kindling fires on St. John's Eve and jumping

over them is said to be still universal. One reason assigned for it is a

wish to escape from the fleas.[543] According to another account, the

women cry out, as they leap over the fire, "I leave my sins behind

me."[544] In Lesbos the fires on St. John's Eve are usually lighted by

threes, and the people spring thrice over them, each with a stone on his

head, saying, "I jump the hare's fire, my head a stone!" On the morning

of St. John's Day those who dwell near the coast go to bathe in the sea.

As they go they gird themselves with osiers, and when they are in the

water they let the osiers float away, saying, "Let my maladies go away!"

Then they look for what is called "the hairy stone," which possesses the

remarkable property not only of keeping moths from clothes but even of

multiplying the clothes in the chest where it is laid up, and the more

hairs on the stone the more will the clothes multiply in the chest.[545]

In Calymnos the midsummer fire is supposed to ensure abundance in the

coming year as well as deliverance from fleas. The people dance round

the fires singing, with stones on their heads, and then jump over the

blaze or the glowing embers. When the fire is burning low, they throw

the stones into it; and when it is nearly out, they make crosses on

their legs and then go straightway and bathe in the sea.[546] In Cos the

lads and lasses dance round the bonfires on St. John's Eve. Each of the

lads binds a black stone on his head, signifying that he wishes to

become as strong as the stone. Also they make the sign of the cross on

their feet and legs and jump over the fire.[547] On Midsummer Eve the

Greeks of Macedonia light fires after supper in front of their gates.

The garlands, now faded, which were hung over the doors on May Day, are

taken down and cast into the flames, after which the young folk leap

over the blaze, fully persuaded that St. John's fire will not burn

them.[548] In Albania fires of dry herbage are, or used to be, lit

everywhere on St. John's Eve; young and old leap over them, for such a

leap is thought to be good for the health.[549]

[The Midsummer fires in America.]

From the Old World the midsummer fires have been carried across the

Atlantic to America. In Brazil people jump over the fires of St. John,

and at this season they can take hot coals in their mouths without

burning themselves.[550] In Bolivia on the Eve of St. John it is usual

to see bonfires lighted on the hills and even in the streets of the

capital La Paz. As the city stands at the bottom of an immense ravine,

and the Indians of the neighbourhood take a pride in kindling bonfires

on heights which might seem inaccessible, the scene is very striking

when the darkness of night is suddenly and simultaneously lit up by

hundreds of fires, which cast a glare on surrounding objects, producing

an effect at once weird and picturesque.[551]

[The Midsummer fires among the Mohammedans of Morocco and Algeria.]

The custom of kindling bonfires on Midsummer Day or on Midsummer Eve is

widely spread among the Mohammedan peoples of North Africa, particularly

in Morocco and Algeria; it is common both to the Berbers and to many of

the Arabs or Arabic-speaking tribes. In these countries Midsummer Day

(the twenty-fourth of June, Old Style) is called [Arabic: _l'ansara_].

The fires are lit in the courtyards, at cross-roads, in the fields, and

sometimes on the threshing-floors. Plants which in burning give out a

thick smoke and an aromatic smell are much sought after for fuel on

these occasions; among the plants used for the purpose are giant-fennel,

thyme, rue, chervil-seed, camomile, geranium, and penny-royal. People

expose themselves, and especially their children, to the smoke, and

drive it towards the orchards and the crops. Also they leap across the

fires; in some places everybody ought to repeat the leap seven times.

Moreover they take burning brands from the fires and carry them through

the houses in order to fumigate them. They pass things through the fire,

and bring the sick into contact with it, while they utter prayers for

their recovery. The ashes of the bonfires are also reputed to possess

beneficial properties; hence in some places people rub their hair or

their bodies with them.[552] For example, the Andjra mountaineers of

Morocco kindle large fires in open places of their villages on Midsummer

Day. Men, women, and children jump over the flames or the glowing

embers, believing that by so doing they rid themselves of all misfortune

which may be clinging to them; they imagine, also, that such leaps cure

the sick and procure offspring for childless couples. Moreover, they

burn straw, together with some marjoram and alum, in the fold where the

cattle, sheep, and goats are penned for the night; the smoke, in their

opinion, will make the animals thrive. On Midsummer Day the Arabs of the

Mnasara tribe make fires outside their tents, near their animals, on

their fields, and in their gardens. Large quantities of penny-royal are

burned in these fires, and over some of them the people leap thrice to

and fro. Sometimes small fires are also kindled inside the tents. They

say that the smoke confers blessings on everything with which it comes

into contact. At Salee, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, persons who

suffer from diseased eyes rub them with the ashes of the midsummer fire;

and in Casablanca and Azemmur the people hold their faces over the fire,

because the smoke is thought to be good for the eyes. The Arab tribe

Ulad Bu Aziz, in the Dukkala province of Morocco, kindle midsummer

bonfires, not for themselves and their cattle, but only for crops and

fruit; nobody likes to reap his crops before Midsummer Day, because if

he did they would lose the benefit of the blessed influence which flows

from the smoke of the bonfires. Again, the Beni Mgild, a Berber tribe of

Morocco, light fires of straw on Midsummer Eve and leap thrice over them

to and fro. They let some of the smoke pass underneath their clothes,

and married women hold their breasts over the fire, in order that their

children may be strong. Moreover, they paint their eyes and lips with

some black powder, in which ashes of the bonfire are mixed. And in order

that their horses may also benefit by the fires, they dip the right

forelegs of the animals in the smoke and flames or in the hot embers,

and they rub ashes on the foreheads and between the nostrils of the

horses. Berbers of the Rif province, in northern Morocco, similarly make

great use of fires at midsummer for the good of themselves, their

cattle, and their fruit-trees. They jump over the bonfires in the belief

that this will preserve them in good health, and they light fires under

fruit-trees to keep the fruit from falling untimely. And they imagine

that by rubbing a paste of the ashes on their hair they prevent the hair

from falling off their heads.[553]

[Beneficial effect ascribed to the smoke of the fires; ill luck supposed

to be burnt in the Midsummer fires; the Midsummer festival in North

Africa comprises rites concerned with water as well as with fire; the

Midsummer festival in North Africa is probably older than

Mohammedanism.]

In all these Moroccan customs, we are told, the beneficial effect is

attributed wholly to the smoke, which is supposed to be endued with a

magical quality that removes misfortune from men, animals, fruit-trees,

and crops. But in some parts of Morocco people at midsummer kindle fires

of a different sort, not for the sake of fumigation, but in order to

burn up misfortune in the flames. Thus on Midsummer Eve the Berber tribe

of the Beni Mgild burn three sheaves of unthreshed wheat or barley, "one

for the children, one for the crops, and one for the animals." On the

same occasion they burn the tent of a widow who has never given birth to

a child; by so doing they think to rid the village of ill luck. It is

said that at midsummer the Zemmur burn a tent, which belongs to somebody

who was killed in war during a feast; or if there is no such person in

the village, the schoolmaster's tent is burned instead. Among the

Arabic-speaking Beni Ahsen it is customary for those who live near the

river Sbu to make a little hut of straw at midsummer, set it on fire,

and let it float down the river. Similarly the inhabitants of Salee burn

a straw hut on the river which flows past their town.[554]

Further it deserves to be noticed that in Northern Africa, as in

Southern Europe, the midsummer festival comprises rites concerned with

water as well as with fire. For example, among the Beni-Snous the women

light a fire in an oven, throw perfumes into it, and circumambulate a

tank, which they also incense after a fashion. In many places on the

coast, as in the province of Oran and particularly in the north of

Morocco, everybody goes and bathes in the sea at midsummer; and in many

towns of the interior, such as Fez, Mequinez, and especially Merrakech,

people throw water over each other on this day; and where water is

scarce, earth is used instead, according to the Mohammedan principle

which permits ablutions to be performed with earth or sand when water

cannot be spared for the purpose.[555] People of the Andjra district in

Morocco not only bathe themselves in the sea or in rivers at midsummer,

they also bathe their animals, their horses, mules, donkeys, cattle,

sheep, and goats; for they think that on that day water possesses a

blessed virtue (_baraka_), which removes sickness and misfortune. In

Aglu, again, men, women, and children bathe in the sea or springs or

rivers at midsummer, alleging that by so doing they protect themselves

against disease for the whole year. Among the Berbers of the Rif

district the custom of bathing on this day is commonly observed, and

animals share the ablutions.[556]

[Some Mohammedans of North Africa kindle fires and observe water

ceremonies at their movable New Year; water ceremonies at New Year in

Morocco; the rites of fire and water at Midsummer and New Year in

Morocco seem to be identical in character; the duplication of the

festival is probably due to a conflict between the solar calendar of the

Romans and the lunar calendar of the Arabs.]

The celebration of a midsummer festival by Mohammedan peoples is

particularly remarkable, because the Mohammedan calendar, being purely

lunar and uncorrected by intercalation, necessarily takes no note of

festivals which occupy fixed points in the solar year; all strictly

Mohammedan feasts, being pinned to the moon, slide gradually with that

luminary through the whole period of the earth's revolution about the

sun. This fact of itself seems to prove that among the Mohammedan

peoples of Northern Africa, as among the Christian peoples of Europe,

the midsummer festival is quite independent of the religion which the

people publicly profess, and is a relic of a far older paganism. There

are, indeed, independent grounds for thinking that the Arabs enjoyed the

advantage of a comparatively well-regulated solar year before the

prophet of God saddled them with the absurdity and inconvenience of a

purely lunar calendar.[557] Be that as it may, it is notable that some

Mohammedan people of North Africa kindle fires and bathe in water at the

movable New Year of their lunar calendar instead of at the fixed

Midsummer of the solar year; while others again practise these

observances at both seasons. New Year's Day, on which the rites are

celebrated, is called _Ashur_; it is the tenth day of Moharram, the

first month of the Mohammedan calendar. On that day bonfires are kindled

in Tunis and also at Merrakech and among some tribes of the

neighbourhood.[558] At Demnat, in the Great Atlas mountains, people

kindle a large bonfire on New Year's Eve and leap to and fro over the

flames, uttering words which imply that by these leaps they think to

purify themselves from all kinds of evil. At Aglu, in the province of

Sus, the fire is lighted at three different points by an unmarried girl,

and when it has died down the young men leap over the glowing embers,

saying, "We shook on you, O Lady Ashur, fleas, and lice, and the

illnesses of the heart, as also those of the bones; we shall pass

through you again next year and the following years with safety and

health." Both at Aglu and Glawi, in the Great Atlas, smaller fires are

also kindled, over which the animals are driven. At Demnat girls who

wish to marry wash themselves in water which has been boiled over the

New Year fire; and in Dukkala people use the ashes of that fire to rub

sore eyes with. New Year fires appear to be commonly kindled among the

Berbers who inhabit the western portion of the Great Atlas, and also

among the Arabic-speaking tribes of the plains; but Dr. Westermarck

found no traces of such fires among the Arabic-speaking mountaineers of

Northern Morocco and the Berbers of the Rif province. Further, it should

be observed that water ceremonies like those which are practised at

Midsummer are very commonly observed in Morocco at the New Year, that

is, on the tenth day of the first month. On the morning of that day

(_Ashur_) all water or, according to some people, only spring water is

endowed with a magical virtue (_baraka_), especially before sunrise.

Hence at that time the people bathe and pour water over each other; in

some places they also sprinkle their animals, tents, or rooms. In

Dukkala some of the New Year water is preserved at home till New Year's

Day (_Ashur_) of next year; some of it is kept to be used as medicine,

some of it is poured on the place where the corn is threshed, and some

is used to water the money which is to be buried in the ground; for the

people think that the earth-spirits will not be able to steal the buried

treasures which have thus been sanctified with the holy water.[559]

[The Midsummer festival in Morocco seems to be of Berber origin.]

Thus the rites of fire and water which are observed in Morocco at

Midsummer and New Year appear to be identical in character and

intention, and it seems certain that the duplication of the rites is due

to a conflict between two calendars, namely the old Julian calendar of

the Romans, which was based on the sun, and the newer Mohammedan

calendar of the Arabs, which is based on the moon. For not only was the

Julian calendar in use throughout the whole of Northern Africa under the

Roman Empire; to this day it is everywhere employed among Mohammedans

for the regulation of agriculture and all the affairs of daily life; its

practical convenience has made it indispensable, and the lunar calendar

of orthodox Mohammedanism is scarcely used except for purposes of

chronology. Even the old Latin names of the months are known and

employed, in slightly disguised forms, throughout the whole Moslem

world; and little calendars of the Julian year circulate in manuscript

among Mohammedans, permitting them to combine the practical advantages

of pagan science with a nominal adherence to orthodox absurdity.[560]

Thus the heathen origin of the midsummer festival is too palpable to

escape the attention of good Mohammedans, who accordingly frown upon the

midsummer bonfires as pagan superstitions, precisely as similar

observances in Europe have often been denounced by orthodox

Christianity. Indeed, many religious people in Morocco entirely

disapprove of the whole of the midsummer ceremonies, maintaining that

they are all bad; and a conscientious schoolmaster will even refuse his

pupils a holiday at midsummer, though the boys sometimes offer him a

bribe if he will sacrifice his scruples to his avarice.[561] As the

midsummer customs appear to flourish among all the Berbers of Morocco

but to be unknown among the pure Arabs who have not been affected by

Berber influence, it seems reasonable to infer with Dr. Westermarck that

the midsummer festival has belonged from time immemorial to the Berber

race, and that so far as it is now observed by the Arabs of Morocco, it

has been learned by them from the Berbers, the old indigenous

inhabitants of the country. Dr. Westermarck may also be right in holding

that, in spite of the close similarity which obtains between the

midsummer festival of Europe and the midsummer festival of North Africa,

the latter is not a copy of the former, but that both have been handed

down independently from a time beyond the purview of history, when such

ceremonies were common to the Mediterranean race.[562]

§ 5. _The Autumn Fires_

[Festivals of fire in August; Russian feast of Florus and Laurus on

August 18th; "Living fire" made by the friction of wood.]

In the months which elapse between midsummer and the setting in of

winter the European festivals of fire appear to be few and unimportant.

On the evening of the first day of August, which is the Festival of the

Cross, bonfires are commonly lit in Macedonia and boys jump over them,

shouting, "Dig up! bury!" but whom or what they wish to dig up or bury

they do not know.[563] The Russians hold the feast of two martyrs,

Florus and Laurus, on the eighteenth day of August, Old Style. "On this

day the Russians lead their horses round the church of their village,

beside which on the foregoing evening they dig a hole with two mouths.

Each horse has a bridle made of the bark of the linden-tree. The horses

go through this hole one after the other, opposite to one of the mouths

of which the priest stands with a sprinkler in his hand, with which he

sprinkles them. As soon as the horses have passed by their bridles are

taken off, and they are made to go between two fires that they kindle,

called by the Russians _Givoy Agon_, that is to say, living fires, of

which I shall give an account. I shall before remark, that the Russian

peasantry throw the bridles of their horses into one of these fires to

be consumed. This is the manner of their lighting these _givoy agon_, or

living fires. Some men hold the ends of a stick made of the plane-tree,

very dry, and about a fathom long. This stick they hold firmly over one

of birch, perfectly dry, and rub with violence and quickly against the

former; the birch, which is somewhat softer than the plane, in a short

time inflames, and serves them to light both the fires I have

described."[564]

[Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin on the eighth of September at Capri

and Naples.]

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin on the eighth day of September

is celebrated at Naples and Capri with fireworks, bonfires, and

assassinations. On this subject my friend Professor A. E. Housman, who

witnessed the celebration in different years at both places, has kindly

furnished me with the following particulars: "In 1906 I was in the

island of Capri on September the eighth, the feast of the Nativity of

the Virgin. The anniversary was duly solemnised by fire-works at nine or

ten in the evening, which I suppose were municipal; but just after

sundown the boys outside the villages were making small fires of

brushwood on waste bits of ground by the wayside. Very pretty it looked,

with the flames blowing about in the twilight; but what took my

attention was the listlessness of the boys and their lack of interest in

the proceeding. A single lad, the youngest, would be raking the fire

together and keeping it alight, but the rest stood lounging about and

looking in every other direction, with the air of discharging

mechanically a traditional office from which all zest had evaporated."

"The pious orgy at Naples on September the eighth went through the

following phases when I witnessed it in 1897. It began at eight in the

evening with an illumination of the façade of Santa Maria Piedigrotta

and with the whole population walking about blowing penny trumpets.

After four hours of this I went to bed at midnight, and was lulled to

sleep by barrel-organs, which supersede the trumpets about that hour. At

four in the morning I was waked by detonations as if the British fleet

were bombarding the city, caused, I was afterwards told, by dynamite

rockets. The only step possible beyond this is assassination, which

accordingly takes place about peep of day: I forget now the number of

the slain, but I think the average is eight or ten, and I know that in

honour of my presence they murdered a few more than usual."

[The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin may have replaced a pagan

festival; the coincidence of the Midsummer festival with the summer

solstice implies that the founders of the festival regulated their

calendar by observation of the sun.]

It is no doubt possible that these illuminations and fireworks, like the

assassinations, are merely the natural and spontaneous expressions of

that overflowing joy with which the thought of the birth of the Virgin

must fill every pious heart; but when we remember how often the Church

has skilfully decanted the new wine of Christianity into the old bottles

of heathendom, we may be allowed to conjecture that the ecclesiastical

authorities adroitly timed the Nativity of the Virgin so as to coincide

with an old pagan festival of that day, in which fire, noise, and

uproar, if not broken heads and bloodshed, were conspicuous features.

The penny trumpets blown on this occasion recall the like melodious

instruments which figure so largely in the celebration of Befana (the

Eve of Epiphany) at Rome.[565]

§ 6. _The Hallowe'en Fires_

[On the other hand the Celts divided their year, not by the solstices,

but by the beginning of summer (the first of May) and the beginning of

winter (the first of November).]

From the foregoing survey we may infer that among the heathen

forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread

fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or

Midsummer Day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice

can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan

ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on earth to coincide with

the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky. If

that was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites had

observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's apparent path in

the sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal calendar to

some extent by astronomical considerations.

[The division seems to have been neither astronomical nor agricultural

but pastoral, being determined by the times when cattle are driven to

and from their summer pasture.]

But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call

the aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not

to have been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End of

Europe, the islands and promontories that stretch out into the Atlantic

ocean on the North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the Celts,

which have survived, though in a restricted area and with diminished

pomp, to modern times and even to our own day, were seemingly timed

without any reference to the position of the sun in the heaven. They

were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one being

celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow Even or

Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first

of October, the day preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day. These

dates coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar

year revolves, to wit, the solstices and the equinoxes. Nor do they

agree with the principal seasons of the agricultural year, the sowing in

spring and the reaping in autumn. For when May Day comes, the seed has

long been committed to the earth; and when November opens, the harvest

has long been reaped and garnered, the fields lie bare, the fruit-trees

are stripped, and even the yellow leaves are fast fluttering to the

ground. Yet the first of May and the first of November mark

turning-points of the year in Europe; the one ushers in the genial heat

and the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds, if it does not

share, the cold and barrenness of winter. Now these particular points of

the year, as has been well pointed out by a learned and ingenious

writer,[566] while they are of comparatively little moment to the

European husbandman, do deeply concern the European herdsman; for it is

on the approach of summer that he drives his cattle out into the open to

crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of winter that he leads

them back to the safety and shelter of the stall. Accordingly it seems

not improbable that the Celtic bisection of the year into two halves at

the beginning of May and the beginning of November dates from a time

when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent for their

subsistence on their herds, and when accordingly the great epochs of the

year for them were the days on which the cattle went forth from the

homestead in early summer and returned to it again in early winter.[567]

Even in Central Europe, remote from the region now occupied by the

Celts, a similar bisection of the year may be clearly traced in the

great popularity, on the one hand, of May Day and its Eve (Walpurgis

Night), and, on the other hand, of the Feast of All Souls at the

beginning of November, which under a thin Christian cloak conceals an

ancient pagan festival of the dead.[568] Hence we may conjecture that

everywhere throughout Europe the celestial division of the year

according to the solstices was preceded by what we may call a

terrestrial division of the year according to the beginning of summer

and the beginning of winter.

[The two great Celtic festivals, Beltane and Hallowe'en.]

Be that as it may, the two great Celtic festivals of May Day and the

first of November or, to be more accurate, the Eves of these two days,

closely resemble each other in the manner of their celebration and in

the superstitions associated with them, and alike, by the antique

character impressed upon both, betray a remote and purely pagan origin.

The festival of May Day or Beltane, as the Celts called it, which

ushered in summer, has already been described;[569] it remains to give

some account of the corresponding festival of Hallowe'en, which

announced the arrival of winter.

[Hallowe'en (the evening of October 31st) seems to have marked the

beginning of the Celtic year; the many forms of divination resorted to

at Hallowe'en are appropriate to the beginning of a New Year; Hallowe'en

also a festival of the dead.]

Of the two feasts Hallowe'en was perhaps of old the more important,

since the Celts would seem to have dated the beginning of the year from

it rather than from Beltane. In the Isle of Man, one of the fortresses

in which the Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege

of the Saxon invaders, the first of November, Old Style, has been

regarded as New Year's day down to recent times. Thus Manx mummers used

to go round on Hallowe'en (Old Style), singing, in the Manx language, a

sort of Hogmanay song which began "To-night is New Year's Night,

_Hog-unnaa_!"[570] One of Sir John Rhys's Manx informants, an old man of

sixty-seven, "had been a farm servant from the age of sixteen till he

was twenty-six to the same man, near Regaby, in the parish of Andreas,

and he remembers his master and a near neighbour of his discussing the

term New Year's Day as applied to the first of November, and explaining

to the younger men that it had always been so in old times. In fact, it

seemed to him natural enough, as all tenure of land ends at that time,

and as all servant men begin their service then."[571] In ancient

Ireland, as we saw, a new fire used to be kindled every year on

Hallowe'en or the Eve of Samhain, and from this sacred flame all the

fires in Ireland were rekindled.[572] Such a custom points strongly to

Samhain or All Saints' Day (the first of November) as New Year's Day;

since the annual kindling of a new fire takes place most naturally at

the beginning of the year, in order that the blessed influence of the

fresh fire may last throughout the whole period of twelve months.

Another confirmation of the view that the Celts dated their year from

the first of November is furnished by the manifold modes of divination

which, as we shall see presently, were commonly resorted to by Celtic

peoples on Hallowe'en for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny,

especially their fortune in the coming year; for when could these

devices for prying into the future be more reasonably put in practice

than at the beginning of the year? As a season of omens and auguries

Hallowe'en seems to have far surpassed Beltane in the imagination of the

Celts; from which we may with some probability infer that they reckoned

their year from Hallowe'en rather than Beltane. Another circumstance of

great moment which points to the same conclusion is the association of

the dead with Hallowe'en. Not only among the Celts but throughout

Europe, Hallowe'en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to

winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the

departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm

themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer

provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate

kinsfolk.[573] It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of

winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare

fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its

familiar fireside.[574] Did not the lowing kine then troop back from the

summer pastures in the forests and on the hills to be fed and cared for

in the stalls, while the bleak winds whistled among the swaying boughs

and the snow drifts deepened in the hollows? and could the good-man and

the good-wife deny to the spirits of their dead the welcome which they

gave to the cows?

[Fairies and Hobgoblins let loose at Hallowe'en.]

But it is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be

hovering unseen on the day "when autumn to winter resigns the pale

year." Witches then speed on their errands of mischief, some sweeping

through the air on besoms, others galloping along the roads on

tabby-cats, which for that evening are turned into coal-black

steeds.[575] The fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of

every sort roam freely about In South Uist and Eriskay there is a

saying:--

"_Hallowe'en will come, will come,

Witchcraft [or divination] will be set agoing,

Fairies will be at full speed,

Running in every pass.

Avoid the road, children, children_."[576]

[Dancing with the fairies at Hallowe'en.]

In Cardiganshire on November Eve a bogie sits on every stile.[577] On

that night in Ireland all the fairy hills are thrown wide open and the

fairies swarm forth; any man who is bold enough may then peep into the

open green hills and see the treasures hidden in them. Worse than that,

the cave of Cruachan in Connaught, known as "the Hell-gate of Ireland,"

is unbarred on Samhain Eve or Hallowe'en, and a host of horrible fiends

and goblins used to rush forth, particularly a flock of copper-red

birds, which blighted crops and killed animals by their poisonous

breath.[578] The Scotch Highlanders have a special name _Samhanach_

(derived from _Samhain_, "All-hallows") for the dreadful bogies that go

about that night stealing babies and committing other atrocities.[579]

And though the fairies are a kindlier folk, it is dangerous to see even

them at their revels on Hallowe'en. A melancholy case of this sort is

reported from the Ferintosh district of the Highlands, though others say

that it happened at the Slope of Big Stones in Harris. Two young men

were coming home after nightfall on Hallowe'en, each with a jar of

whisky on his back, when they saw, as they thought, a house all lit up

by the roadside, from which proceeded the sounds of music and dancing.

In reality it was not a house at all but a fairy knoll, and it was the

fairies who were jigging it about there so merrily. But one of the young

men was deceived and stepping into the house joined in the dance,

without even stopping to put down the jar of whisky. His companion was

wiser; he had a shrewd suspicion that the place was not what it seemed,

and on entering he took the precaution of sticking a needle in the door.

That disarmed the power of the fairies, and he got away safely. Well,

that day twelve months he came back to the spot and what should he see

but his poor friend still dancing away with the jar of whisky on his

back? A weary man was he, as you may well believe, but he begged to be

allowed to finish the reel which he was in the act of executing, and

when they took him out into the open air, there was nothing of him left

but skin and bones.[580] Again, the wicked fairies are apt to carry off

men's wives with them to fairyland; but the lost spouses can be

recovered within a year and a day when the procession of the fairies is

defiling past on Hallowe'en, always provided that the mortals did not

partake of elfin food while they were in elfinland.[581]

[Guleesh and the revels of the fairies at Hallowe'en.]

Sometimes valuable information may be obtained from the fairies on

Hallowe'en. There was a young man named Guleesh in the County of Mayo.

Near his house was a _rath_ or old fort with a fine grass bank running

round it. One Hallowe'en, when the darkness was falling, Guleesh went to

the rath and stood on a gray old flag. The night was calm and still;

there was not a breath of wind stirring, nor a sound to be heard except

the hum of the insects flitting past, or the whistle of the plovers, or

the hoarse scream of the wild geese as they winged their way far

overhead. Above the white fog the moon rose like a knob of fire in the

east, and a thousand thousand stars were twinkling in the sky. There was

a little frost in the air, the grass was white and crisp and crackled

under foot. Guleesh expected to see the fairies, but they did not come.

Hour after hour wore away, and he was just bethinking him of going home

to bed, when his ear caught a sound far off coming towards him, and he

knew what it was in a moment. The sound grew louder and louder; at first

it was like the beating of waves on a stony shore, then it was like the

roar of a waterfall, at last it was like a mighty rushing wind in the

tops of the trees, then the storm burst upon the rath, and sure enough

the fairies were in it. The rout went by so suddenly that Guleesh lost

his breath; but he came to himself and listened. The fairies were now

gathered within the grassy bank of the rath, and a fine uproar they

made. But Guleesh listened with all his ears, and he heard one fairy

saying to another that a magic herb grew by Guleesh's own door, and that

Guleesh had nothing to do but pluck it and boil it and give it to his

sweetheart, the daughter of the King of France, and she would be well,

for just then she was lying very ill. Guleesh took the hint, and

everything went as the fairy had said. And he married the daughter of

the King of France; and they had never a cark nor a care, a sickness nor

a sorrow, a mishap nor a misfortune to the day of their death.[582]

[Divination resorted to in Celtic countries at Hallowe'en.]