“_Then doth the joyfull feast of John the Baptist take his turne,_

_When bonfiers great with loftie flame, in every towne doe burne;_

_And yong men round about with maides, doe daunce in every

streete,_

_With garlands wrought of Motherwort, or else with Vervain

sweete,_

_And many other flowres faire, with Violets in their handes,_

_Whereas they all do fondly thinke, that whosoever standes,_

_And thorow the flowres beholds the flame, his eyes shall feele no

paine._

_When thus till night they daunced have, they through the fire

amaine_

_With striving mindes doe runne, and all their hearbes they cast

therin,_

_And then with wordes devout and prayers, they solemnely begin,_

_Desiring God that all their illes may there consumed bee,_

_Whereby they thinke through all that yeare from Agues to be

free._

_Some others get a rotten wheele, all worne and cast aside,_

_Which covered round about with strawe, and tow, they closely

hide:_

_And caryed to some mountaines top, being all with fire light,_

_They hurle it downe with violence, when darke appeares the

night:_

_Resembling much the Sunne, that from the heavens downe should

fal,_

_A straunge and monstrous sight it seemes, and fearfull to them

all:_

_But they suppose their mischiefes all are likewise throwne to

hell,_

_And that from harmes and daungers now, in safetie here they

dwell._”(397)

From these general descriptions, which to some extent still hold good, or

did so till lately, we see that the main features of the midsummer

fire-festival resemble those which we have found to characterize the

vernal festivals of fire. The similarity of the two sets of ceremonies

will plainly appear from the following examples.

(M139) A writer of the first half of the sixteenth century informs us that

in almost every village and town of Germany public bonfires were kindled

on the Eve of St. John, and young and old, of both sexes, gathered about

them and passed the time in dancing and singing. People on this occasion

wore chaplets of mugwort and vervain, and they looked at the fire through

bunches of larkspur which they held in their hands, believing that this

would preserve their eyes in a healthy state throughout the year. As each

departed, he threw the mugwort and vervain into the fire, saying, “May all

my ill-luck depart and be burnt up with these.”(398) At Lower Konz, a

village prettily situated on a hillside overlooking the Moselle, in the

midst of a wood of walnut-trees and fruit-trees, the midsummer festival

used to be celebrated as follows. A quantity of straw was collected on the

top of the steep Stromberg Hill. Every inhabitant, or at least every

householder, had to contribute his share of straw to the pile; a recusant

was looked at askance, and if in the course of the year he happened to

break a leg or lose a child, there was not a gossip in the village but

knew the reason why. At nightfall the whole male population, men and boys,

mustered on the top of the hill; the women and girls were not allowed to

join them, but had to take up their position at a certain spring half-way

down the slope. On the summit stood a huge wheel completely encased in

some of the straw which had been jointly contributed by the villagers; the

rest of the straw was made into torches. From each side of the wheel the

axle-tree projected about three feet, thus furnishing handles to the lads

who were to guide it in its descent. The mayor of the neighbouring town of

Sierck, who always received a basket of cherries for his services, gave

the signal; a lighted torch was applied to the wheel, and as it burst into

flame, two young fellows, strong-limbed and swift of foot, seized the

handles and began running with it down the slope. A great shout went up.

Every man and boy waved a blazing torch in the air, and took care to keep

it alight so long as the wheel was trundling down the hill. Some of them

followed the fiery wheel, and watched with amusement the shifts to which

its guides were put in steering it round the hollows and over the broken

ground on the mountainside. The great object of the young men who guided

the wheel was to plunge it blazing into the water of the Moselle; but they

rarely succeeded in their efforts, for the vineyards which cover the

greater part of the declivity impeded their progress, and the wheel was

often burned out before it reached the river. As it rolled past the women

and girls at the spring, they raised cries of joy which were answered by

the men on the top of the mountain; and the shouts were echoed by the

inhabitants of neighbouring villages who watched the spectacle from their

hills on the opposite bank of the Moselle. If the fiery wheel was

successfully conveyed to the bank of the river and extinguished in the

water, the people looked for an abundant vintage that year, and the

inhabitants of Konz had the right to exact a waggon-load of white wine

from the surrounding vineyards. On the other hand, they believed that, if

they neglected to perform the ceremony, the cattle would be attacked by

giddiness and convulsions and would dance in their stalls.(399)

(M140) Down at least to the middle of the nineteenth century the midsummer

fires used to blaze all over Upper Bavaria. They were kindled especially

on the mountains, but also far and wide in the lowlands, and we are told

that in the darkness and stillness of night the moving groups, lit up by

the flickering glow of the flames, presented an impressive spectacle. In

some places the people shewed their sense of the sanctity of the fires by

using for fuel the trees past which the gay procession had defiled, with

fluttering banners, on Corpus Christi Day. In others the children

collected the firewood from door to door on the eve of the festival,

singing their request for fuel at every house in doggerel verse. Cattle

were driven through the fire to cure the sick animals and to guard such as

were sound against plague and harm of every kind throughout the year. Many

a householder on that day put out the fire on the domestic hearth and

rekindled it by means of a brand taken from the midsummer bonfire. The

people judged of the height to which the flax would grow in the year by

the height to which the flames of the bonfire rose; and whoever leaped

over the burning pile was sure not to suffer from backache in reaping the

corn at harvest. But it was especially the practice for lovers to spring

over the fire hand in hand, and the way in which each couple made the leap

was the subject of many a jest and many a superstition. In one district

the custom of kindling the bonfires was combined with that of lighting

wooden discs and hurling them in the air after the manner which prevails

at some of the spring festivals.(400) In many parts of Bavaria it was

believed that the flax would grow as high as the young people leaped over

the fire.(401) In others the old folk used to plant three charred sticks

from the bonfire in the fields, believing that this would make the flax

grow tall.(402) Elsewhere an extinguished brand was put in the roof of the

house to protect it against fire. In the towns about Würzburg the bonfires

used to be kindled in the market-places, and the young people who jumped

over them wore garlands of flowers, especially of mugwort and vervain, and

carried sprigs of larkspur in their hands. They thought that such as

looked at the fire holding a bit of larkspur before their face would be

troubled by no malady of the eyes throughout the year.(403) Further, it

was customary at Würzburg, in the sixteenth century, for the bishop’s

followers to throw burning discs of wood into the air from a mountain

which overhangs the town. The discs were discharged by means of flexible

rods, and in their flight through the darkness presented the appearance of

fiery dragons.(404)

(M141) In the valley of the Lech, which divides Upper Bavaria from Swabia,

the midsummer customs and beliefs are, or used to be, very similar.

Bonfires are kindled on the mountains on Midsummer Day; and besides the

bonfire a tall beam, thickly wrapt in straw and surmounted by a

cross-piece, is burned in many places. Round this cross as it burns the

lads dance with loud shouts; and when the flames have subsided, the young

people leap over the fire in pairs, a young man and a young woman

together. If they escape unsmirched, the man will not suffer from fever,

and the girl will not become a mother within the year. Further, it is

believed that the flax will grow that year as high as they leap over the

fire; and that if a charred billet be taken from the fire and stuck in a

flax-field it will promote the growth of the flax.(405) Similarly in

Swabia, lads and lasses, hand in hand, leap over the midsummer bonfire,

praying that the hemp may grow three ells high, and they set fire to

wheels of straw and send them rolling down the hill. Among the places

where burning wheels were thus bowled down hill at Midsummer were the

Hohenstaufen mountains in Wurtemberg and the Frauenberg near

Gerhausen.(406) At Deffingen, in Swabia, as the people sprang over the

midsummer bonfire they cried out, “Flax, flax! may the flax this year grow

seven ells high!”(407) At Rottenburg in Swabia, down to the year 1807 or

1808, the festival was marked by some special features. About mid-day

troops of boys went about the town begging for firewood at the houses. In

each troop there were three leaders, one of whom carried a dagger, a

second a paper banner, and a third a white plate covered with a white

cloth. These three entered each house and recited verses, in which they

expressed an intention of roasting Martin Luther and sending him to the

devil; and for this meritorious service they expected to be paid, the

contributions being received in the cloth-covered plate. In the evening

they counted up their money and proceeded to “behead the Angel-man.” For

this ceremony an open space was chosen, sometimes in the middle of the

town. Here a stake was thrust into the ground and straw wrapt about it, so

as to make a rude effigy of human form with arms, head, and face. Every

boy brought a handful of nosegays and fastened them to the straw-man, who

was thus enveloped in flowers. Fuel was heaped about the stake and set on

fire. When the Angel-man, as the straw-effigy was called, blazed up, all

the boys of the neighbourhood, who had gathered expectantly around, fell

upon him with their wooden swords and hewed him to pieces. As soon as he

had vanished in smoke and flame, the lads leaped backward and forward over

the glowing embers, and later in the evening they feasted on the proceeds

of their collection.(408) Here the Angel-man burnt in the fire appears to

be identified with Martin Luther, to whom, as we have seen, allusion was

made during the house-to-house visitation. The identification was probably

modern, for we may assume that the custom of burning an effigy in the

Midsummer bonfire is far older than the time of Luther.

(M142) 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)

(M143) 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)

(M144) 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 corn-flowers 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)

(M145) 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 Bălar_), 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)

(M146) 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)

(M147) 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 cart-wheel 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)

(M148) 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)

(M149) 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)

(M150) 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)

(M151) 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.

(M152) 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)

(M153) 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)

(M154) 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)

(M155) 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)

(M156) 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)

(M157) 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)

(M158) 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 hand-bells, 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)

(M159) 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)

(M160) 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)

(M161) 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)

(M162) 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)

(M163) 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)

(M164) 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)

(M165) 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)

(M166) 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)

(M167) 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)

(M168) 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 Carn 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)

(M169) 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)

(M170) 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)

(M171) 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)

(M172) 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)

(M173) 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 north-east 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)

(M174) 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)

(M175) 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)

(M176) 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)

(M177) 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)

(M178) 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)

(M179) 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 _l’ánṣăra_.

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)

(M180) 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)

(M181) 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)

(M182) 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)