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 [pg 195] 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 [pg 196] preventive of colic, and they keep the ashes at home to hinder fire from breaking out.[494]
The Midsummer fires in England. Stow's description of the Midsummer fires in London. The Midsummer fires at Eton.
The custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has been observed in many parts of our own country. “On the Vigil of Saint John the Baptist, commonly called Midsummer Eve, it was usual in most country places, and also in towns and cities, for the inhabitants, both old and young, and of both sexes, to meet together, and make merry by the side of a large fire made in the middle of the street, or in some open and convenient place, over which the young men frequently leaped by way of frolic, and also exercised themselves with various sports and pastimes, more especially with running, wrestling, and dancing. These diversions they continued till midnight, and sometimes till cock-crowing.”[495] In the streets of London the midsummer fires were lighted in the time of Queen Elizabeth down to the end of the sixteenth century, as we learn from Stow's description, which runs thus: “In the months of June and July, on the vigils of festival days, and on the same festival days in the evenings after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them; the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out tables on the vigils furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for His benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst neighbours that being before at controversy, were there, by the labour of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air. On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the Apostles, every man's door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night; some hung [pg 197] out branches of iron curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps alight at once, which made a goodly show, namely, in New Fish Street, Thames Street, etc.”[496] In the sixteenth century the Eton boys used to kindle a bonfire on the east side of the church both on St. John's Day and on St. Peter's Day.[497] Writing in the second half of the seventeenth century, the antiquary John Aubrey tells us that bonfires were still kindled in many places on St. John's Night, but that the civil wars had thrown many of these old customs out of fashion. Wars, he adds, extinguish superstition as well as religion and laws, and there is nothing like gunpowder for putting phantoms to flight.[498]
The Midsummer fires in the north of England. The Midsummer fires in Northumberland. The Midsummer fires at Whalton in Northumberland.
In the north of England these fires used to be lit in the open streets. Young and old gathered round them, and while the young leaped over the fires and engaged in games, their elders looked on and probably remembered with regret the days when they used to foot it as nimbly. Sometimes the fires were kindled on the tops of high hills. The people also carried firebrands about the fields.[499] The custom of kindling bonfires on Midsummer Eve prevailed all over Cumberland down to the second half of the eighteenth century.[500] In Northumberland the custom seems to have lasted into the first quarter of the nineteenth century; the fires were lit in the villages and on the tops of high hills, and the people sported and danced round them.[501] Moreover, the villagers used to run with burning brands round their [pg 198] fields and to snatch ashes from a neighbour's fire, saying as they did so, “We have the flower (or flour) of the wake.”[502] At Sandhill bonfires were kindled on the Eve of St. Peter as well as on Midsummer Eve; the custom is attested for the year 1575, when it was described as ancient.[503] We are told that “on Midsummer's eve, reckoned according to the old style, it was formerly the custom of the inhabitants, young and old, not only of Whalton, but of most of the adjacent villages, to collect a large cartload of whins and other combustible materials, which was dragged by them with great rejoicing (a fiddler being seated on the top of the cart) into the village and erected into a pile. The people from the surrounding country assembled towards evening, when it was set on fire; and whilst the young danced around it, the elders looked on smoking their pipes and drinking their beer, until it was consumed. There can be little doubt that this curious old custom dates from a very remote antiquity.” In a law-suit, which was tried in 1878, the rector of Whalton gave evidence of the constant use of the village green for the ceremony since 1843. “The bonfire,” he said, “was lighted a little to the north-east of the well at Whalton, and partly on the footpath, and people danced round it and jumped through it. That was never interrupted.” The Rev. G. R. Hall, writing in 1879, says that “the fire festivals or bonfires of the summer solstice at the Old Midsummer until recently were commemorated on Christenburg Crags and elsewhere by leaping through and dancing round the fires, as those who have been present have told me.”[504] Down to the early part of the nineteenth century bonfires called Beal-fires used to be lit on Midsummer Eve all over the wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire.[505]
The Midsummer fires in Herefordshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall. The Cornish fires on Midsummer Eve and St. Peter's Eve.
In Herefordshire and Somersetshire the peasants used to make fires in the fields on Midsummer Eve “to bless the apples.”[506] In Devonshire the custom of leaping over the midsummer fires was also observed.[507] “In Cornwall, the festival fires, called bonfires, are kindled on the Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter's day; and Midsummer is thence, in the Cornish tongue, called Goluan, which signifies both light and rejoicing. At these fires the Cornish attend with lighted torches, tarred and pitched at the end, and make their perambulations round their fires, going from village to village and carrying their torches before them; this is certainly the remains of Druid superstition; for, Faces praeferre, to carry lighted torches was reckoned a kind of gentilism, and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils.”[508] At Penzance and elsewhere in the county the people danced and sang about the bonfires on Midsummer Eve. On Whiteborough, a large tumulus near Launceston, a huge bonfire used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve; a tall summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the centre of the bonfire.[509] The Cornish fires at this season appear to have been commonly lit on high and conspicuous hills, such as Tregonan, Godolphin, Carnwarth, and 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 [pg 200] [the twenty-eighth of June] is distinguished by a similar display of bonfires and torches, although the ‘quay-fair’ on St. Peter's-day [the twenty-ninth of June], has been discontinued upwards of forty years. On these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in Penzance. On either side of this line young men and women pass up and down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those of the tar-barrels. Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm, are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets. In St. Just, and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their fathers' employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same substance. As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same little batteries serve for many years. On these nights, Mount's Bay has a most animating appearance, although not equal to what was annually witnessed at the beginning of the present century, when the whole coast, from the Land's End to the Lizard, wherever a town or a village existed, was lighted up with these stationary or moving fires. In the early part of the evening, children may be seen wearing wreaths of flowers—a custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when they danced around the fires. At the close of the fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in hand, forming a long string, and run through the streets, playing ‘thread the needle,’ heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and oftentimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have on these occasions seen boys following one another, jumping through flames higher than themselves.”[511]
The Midsummer fires in Wales and the Isle of Man. Burning wheel rolled down hill.
In Wales the midsummer fires were kindled on St. John's [pg 201] Eve and on St. John's Day. Three or nine different kinds of wood and charred faggots carefully preserved from the last midsummer were deemed necessary to build the bonfire, which was generally done on rising ground. Various herbs were thrown into the blaze; and girls with bunches of three or nine different kinds of flowers would take the hands of boys, who wore flowers in their buttonholes and hats, and together the young couples would leap over the fires. On the same two midsummer days roses and wreaths of flowers were hung over the doors and windows. “Describing a midsummer fire, an old inhabitant, born in 1809, remembered being taken to different hills in the Vale of Glamorgan to see festivities in which people from all parts of the district participated. She was at that time about fourteen, and old enough to retain a vivid recollection of the circumstances. People conveyed trusses of straw to the top of the hill, where men and youths waited for the contributions. Women and girls were stationed at the bottom of the hill. Then a large cart-wheel was thickly swathed with straw, and not an inch of wood was left in sight. A pole was inserted through the centre of the wheel, so that long ends extended about a yard on each side. If any straw remained, it was made up into torches at the top of tall sticks. At a given signal the wheel was lighted, and sent rolling downhill. If this fire-wheel went out before it reached the bottom of the hill, a very poor harvest was promised. If it kept lighted all the way down, and continued blazing for a long time, the harvest would be exceptionally abundant. Loud cheers and shouts accompanied the progress of the wheel.”[512] At Darowen in Wales small bonfires were kindled on Midsummer Eve.[513] On the same day people in the Isle of Man were wont to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.[514]
The Midsummer fires in Ireland. Passage of people and cattle through the fires. Cattle driven through the fire; ashes used to fertilize the fields. The White Horse at the Midsummer fire.