The writer of the old homily De Festo Sancti Johannis Baptistæ, when referring to these observances, speaks of three fires being kindled, one of which was called "a Bone fire; another is clene woode and no bones, and that is called a Wode fire, for people to sit and wake thereby; the third is made of wode and bones, and is called Saynt Johanny's Fyre.[13] The first fyre, as a great clerke, Johan Belleth, telleth he saw in a certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete the which causid that dragons to go together in tokenynge that Johan dyed in brennynge love and charyté of God and man.... Then as these dragons flewe in th' ayre, they shed down to the water froth of ther Kynde, and so envenymed the waters, and caused moche people for to take theyr deth thereby, and many dyverse sykenesse. Wyse clerkes knoweth well that dragons hate nothyng more than the stenche of brennynge bones, and therefore they gaderyd as many as they mighte fynde, and brent them; and so with the stenche thereof they drove away the dragons, and so they were brought out of greete dysease."
Brand regards this as a "pleasant piece of absurdity;" but it appears that the quaint old writer, after all, is but relating that which was believed to be true in his own age, and which after-gained knowledge enables us to distinguish as a remnant of the old Aryan superstition or myth, in a mediæval dress. These rolling fiery wheels, burning brands, bonfires, and processions round fields, &c., are common to both the Keltic and Teutonic branches of the Aryan race, and have evidently a similar origin. Kemble quotes an ancient Latin MS., which he found among the Harleian collection, which gives a precisely similar description of the St. John's fires. It is not improbable that it may have been written by the "learned clerke Johan Belleth," to whom the writer of the homily refers. Walter Kelly, speaking of it says, "Here we have again the primitive Aryan dragon Ahi, at his old work in the sultry midsummer weather." He contends that all the details referred to, as attendant on the St. John's fires, have been demonstrated by Dr. Kuhn to be "in striking accordance with the Vedic legend of Indra's fight with the midsummer demons. The passage quoted by Kemble, besides stating expressly that the course of the blazing wheel was meant to represent the descent of the sun from its solstitial height, brings the St. John's fires in immediate connection with the dragons that poison the waters, just as did the demon Vritra, otherwise called Ahi, the dragon. He possessed himself of the sun-wheel and the treasures of Heaven, seized the (white) women, kept them prisoners in his cavern, and laid a curse on the waters, until Indra released the captives and took off the curse. The same conception is repeated in countless legends of mountains that open on St. John's day, when the imprisoned white women come forth, and the hour approaches in which the spell laid upon them and upon the buried treasures will be broken.... Here we see at once that the German" (and Keltic) "custom was nothing else than a dramatic representation of the great elemental battle portrayed in the sacred books of the southern Aryans. In the one the blazing wheel stands on the top of the hill, in the other the sun stands on the summit of the cloud mountain. Both descend from their heights, and both are extinguished, the sun in the cloud sea, behind the cloud mountain, the wheel in the river at the foot of the hill." One name given to a combatant on the dragon's side is Kuyava, which is interpreted the "harvest spoiler, or the spoiled harvest." The following passage in the Rig Veda is uttered by Indra, when he resolves to destroy the monster,—"Friend Vishnu, stride vastly; sky give room for the thunderbolt to strike; let us slay Vritra and let loose the waters." His worshippers likewise exclaim,—"When, thunderer, thou didst by thy might slay Vritra, who stopped up the streams, then thy dear steeds grew."
The Rev. G. W. Cox says:—"The Nemean lion is the offspring of Typhon, Orthros, or Echidna; in other words it is sprung from Vritra, the dark thief, and Ahi, the throttling snake of darkness, and it is as surely slain by Heracles as the snakes which had assaulted him in his cradle. Another child of the same horrid parents is the Lernaian Hydra, its very name denoting a monster who, like the Sphinx or the Panis, shuts up the waters and causes drought. It has many heads, one being immortal, as the storm must constantly supply new clouds, while the vapours are driven off by the sun into space. Hence the story went that although Heracles could burn away its mortal heads, as the sun burns up the clouds, still he can but hide away the mist or vapour itself, which at its appointed time must again darken the sky."
Dr. Kuhn contends that the clothing of wheels with straw and the extinguishing of them when set on fire by immersion in a river, as is done in the vine-growing districts of Germany, with the view to secure a good harvest, is to be referred to this source. In support of his view, he enters into an elaborate philological argument to show that yava must have originally meant grass in general, afterwards cereal grasses, and that its root gave birth to the name of the grain from which the oldest bread-stuff known was made. He says—"But I go still further, and I believe that Kuyava was also regarded as the spoiler of vegetation in general, who parched up the plants used in making the fermented liquor, soma, and amongst these plants the Hindus included yava, which, in this case, meant barley or rice. It will be seen in the sequel that the demon possesses himself also of the heavenly soma (the moisture of the clouds), that he is robbed of it by Indra, and that the like conception is found also among the Greeks and the Germans. This, then, sufficiently explains the hope of a good wine year, which was associated with the victory in the above-described German customs."
The Venerable Bede, in his treatise on the "Nature of Things," gives us what may be termed the scientific view respecting rain and lightning which obtained about his time. It is singularly in accordance with Dr. Kuhn's interpretation of the myth now under consideration. He says:—
"Lightning is produced by the rubbing together of clouds, after the manner of flints struck together, the thunder occurring at the same time, but sound reaches the ears more slowly than light the eyes. For all things the collision creates fire. Some say that while air draws water in vapour from the depths, it draws also fire heat-wise, and by their contact the horrid crash of thunder is produced; and if the fire conquer, it will be injurious to fruits; if water beneficial; but that the fire of lightning has so much the more penetrative power, from being made of subtler elements than that which is in use by us."
It is merely necessary that the rhetorical figure, personification, be freely applied to this passage, with due reverence towards the ancient superstitions, and the mythic element which lies at the root of these singular customs is reproduced.
It is evident the whole have reference to the influence of the burning heat of the midsummer sun, which induces long droughts, and parches the soil and the vegetation; and to the delight engendered when that heat is mitigated, and the scorched earth is again rendered fruitful by copious showers, the product of the thunderstorm. And to this source, Mr. Kelly justly contends, may be referred all the supernatural dragon stories of our nurseries, whether fought "by Pagan or Christian champions, from Apollo, Hercules, and Siegfried, down to St. George, and to that modern worthy More, of Morehall,
Who slew the dragon of Wantley."
The learned Pettingall has shown that the dragon slain by the English champion and patron, St. George, was, by the ancient Orientals, engraved on amulets, and that it was intended to symbolise the virtues of Mithras, the sun. He says, "From the Pagans the use of these charms passed to the Basilidians, and in their Abraxas, the traces of the antient Mithras and the more modern St. George, are equally visible. In the dark ages, the Christians borrowed their superstitions from the heretics, but they disguised the origin of them, and transformed into the saint the sun of the Persians and the archangel of the Gnostics."[14]