Nor is the superstition confined to Europe and to people of European descent. In Morocco also the Mohammedans are of opinion that certain plants, such as penny-royal, marjoram, and the oleander, acquire a special magic virtue (baraka) when they are gathered shortly before midsummer. Hence the people collect these plants at this season and preserve them for magical or medical purposes. For example, branches of oleander are brought into the houses before midsummer and kept under the roof as a charm against the evil eye; but while the branches are being brought in they may not touch the ground, else they would lose their marvellous properties. Cases of sickness caused by the evil eye are cured by fumigating the patients with the smoke of these boughs. The greatest efficacy is ascribed to “the sultan of the oleander,” which is a stalk with four pairs of leaves clustered round it. Such a stalk is always endowed with magical virtue, but that virtue is greatest when the stalk has been cut just before midsummer. Arab women in the Hiaina district of Morocco gather Daphne gnidium on Midsummer Day, dry it in the sun, and make it into a powder which, mixed with water, they daub on the heads of their little children to protect them from sunstroke and vermin and to make their hair grow well. Indeed such marvellous powers do these Arabs attribute to plants at this mystic season that a barren woman will walk naked about a vegetable garden on Midsummer Night in the hope of conceiving a child through the fertilizing influence of the vegetables.[143]
Seven different sorts of magical plants gathered at Midsummer. Nine different sorts of plants gathered at Midsummer. Dreams of love on flowers at Midsummer Eve. Love's watery mirror at Midsummer Eve.
Sometimes in order to produce the desired effect it is deemed necessary that seven or nine different sorts of plants should be gathered at this mystic season. Norman peasants, who wish to fortify themselves for the toil of harvest, will [pg 052] sometimes go out at dawn on St. John's Day and pull seven kinds of plants, which they afterwards eat in their soup as a means of imparting strength and suppleness to their limbs in the harvest field.[144] In Mecklenburg maidens are wont to gather seven sorts of flowers at noon on Midsummer Eve. These they weave into garlands, and sleep with them under their pillows. Then they are sure to dream of the men who will marry them.[145] But the flowers on which youthful lovers dream at Midsummer Eve are oftener nine in number. Thus in Voigtland nine different kinds of flowers are twined into a garland at the hour of noon, but they may not enter the dwelling by the door in the usual way; they must be passed through the window, or, if they come in at the door, they must be thrown, not carried, into the house. Sleeping on them that night you will dream of your future wife or future husband.[146] The Bohemian maid, who gathers nine kinds of flowers on which to dream of love at Midsummer Eve, takes care to wrap her hand in a white cloth, and afterwards to wash it in dew; and when she brings her garland home she must speak no word to any soul she meets by the way, for then all the magic virtue of the flowers would be gone.[147] Other Bohemian girls look into the book of fate at this season after a different fashion. They twine their hair with wreaths made of nine sorts of leaves, and go, when the stars of the summer night are twinkling in the sky, to a brook that flows beside a tree. There, gazing on the stream, the girl beholds, beside the broken reflections of the tree and the stars, the watery image of her future lord.[148] So in Masuren maidens gather nosegays of wild flowers in silence on Midsummer Eve. At the midnight hour each girl takes the nosegay and a glass of water, and when she has spoken certain words she sees her lover mirrored in the water.[149]
Garlands of flowers of nine sorts gathered at Midsummer and used in divination and medicine.
Sometimes Bohemian damsels make a different use of their midsummer garlands twined of nine sorts of flowers. [pg 053] They lie down with the garland laid as a pillow under their right ear, and a hollow voice, swooning from underground, proclaims their destiny.[150] Yet another mode of consulting the oracle by means of these same garlands is to throw them backwards and in silence upon a tree at the hour of noon, just when the flowers have been gathered. For every time that the wreath is thrown without sticking to the branches of the tree the girl will have a year to wait before she weds. This mode of divination is practised in Voigtland,[151] East Prussia,[152] Silesia,[153] Belgium,[154] and Wales,[155] and the same thing is done in Masuren, although we are not told that there the wreaths must be composed of nine sorts of flowers.[156] However, in Masuren chaplets of nine kinds of herbs are gathered on St. John's Eve and put to a more prosaic use than that of presaging the course of true love. They are carefully preserved, and the people brew a sort of tea from them, which they administer as a remedy for many ailments; or they keep the chaplets under their pillows till they are dry, and thereupon dose their sick cattle with them.[157] In Esthonia the virtues popularly ascribed to wreaths of this sort are many and various. These wreaths, composed of nine kinds of herbs culled on the Eve or the Day of St. John, are sometimes inserted in the roof or hung up on the walls of the house, and each of them receives the name of one of the inmates. If the plants which have been thus dedicated to a girl happen to take root and grow in the chinks and crannies, she will soon wed; if they have been dedicated to an older person and wither away, that person will die. The people also give them as medicine to cattle at the time when the animals are driven forth to pasture; or they fumigate the beasts with the smoke of the herbs, which are burnt along with shavings from the wooden threshold. Bunches of the plants are also hung about the house to keep off evil [pg 054] spirits, and maidens lay them under their pillows to dream on.[158] In Sweden the “Midsummer Brooms,” made up of nine sorts of flowers gathered on Midsummer Eve, are put to nearly the same uses. Fathers of families hang up such “brooms” to the rafters, one for each inmate of the house; and he or she whose broom (quast) is the first to wither will be the first to die. Girls also dream of their future husbands with these bunches of flowers under their pillows. A decoction made from the flowers is, moreover, a panacea for all disorders, and if a bunch of them be hung up in the cattle shed, the Troll cannot enter to bewitch the beasts.[159] The Germans of Moravia think that nine kinds of herbs gathered on St. John's Night (Midsummer Eve) are a remedy for fever;[160] and some of the Wends attribute a curative virtue in general to such plants.[161]
St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) gathered for magical purposes at Midsummer. St. John's blood on St. John's Day.
Of the flowers which it has been customary to gather for purposes of magic or divination at midsummer none perhaps is so widely popular as St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum). The reason for associating this particular plant with the great summer festival is perhaps not far to seek, for the flower blooms about Midsummer Day, and with its bright yellow petals and masses of golden stamens it might well pass for a tiny copy on earth of the great sun which reaches its culminating point in heaven at this season. Gathered on Midsummer Eve, or on Midsummer Day before sunrise, the blossoms are hung on doorways and windows to preserve the house against thunder, witches, and evil spirits; and various healing properties are attributed to the different species of the plant. In the Tyrol they say that if you put St. John's wort in your shoe before sunrise on Midsummer Day you may walk as far as you please without growing weary. In Scotland people carried it about their persons as an amulet against witchcraft. On the lower Rhine children twine chaplets of St. John's wort on the morning of Midsummer Day, and throw them on the roofs of the houses. Here, too, the people who danced round the midsummer bonfires used [pg 055] to wear wreaths of these yellow flowers in their hair, and to deck the images of the saints at wayside shrines with the blossoms. Sometimes they flung the flowers into the bonfires. In Sicily they dip St. John's wort in oil, and so apply it as a balm for every wound. During the Middle Ages the power which the plant notoriously possesses of banning devils won for it the name of fuga daemonum; and before witches and wizards were stretched on the rack or otherwise tortured, the flower used to be administered to them as a means of wringing the truth from their lips.[162] In North Wales people used to fix sprigs of St. John's wort over their doors, and sometimes over their windows, “in order to purify their houses, and by that means drive away all fiends and evil spirits.”[163] In Saintonge and Aunis the flowers served to detect the presence of sorcerers, for if one of these pestilent fellows entered a house, the bunches of St. John's wort, which had been gathered on Midsummer Eve and hung on the walls, immediately dropped their yellow heads as if they had suddenly faded.[164] However, the Germans [pg 056] of Western Bohemia think that witches, far from dreading St. John's wort, actually seek the plant on St. John's Eve.[165] Further, the edges of the calyx and petals of St. John's wort, as well as their external surface, are marked with dark purple spots and lines, which, if squeezed, yield a red essential oil soluble in spirits.[166] German peasants believe that this red oil is the blood of St. John,[167] and this may be why the plant is supposed to heal all sorts of wounds.[168] In Mecklenburg they say that if you pull up St. John's wort at noon on Midsummer Day you will find at the root a bead of red juice called St. John's blood; smear this blood on your shirt just over your heart, and no mad dog will bite you.[169] In the Mark of Brandenburg the same blood, procured in the same manner and rubbed on the barrel of a gun, will make every shot from that gun to hit the mark.[170] According to others, St. John's blood is found at noon on St. John's Day, and only then, adhering in the form of beads to the root of a weed called knawel, which grows in sandy soil. But some people say that these beads of red juice are not really the blood of the martyred saint, but only insects resembling the cochineal or kermes-berry.[171] “About Hanover I have often observed devout Roman Catholics going on the morning of St. John's day to neighbouring sandhills, gathering on the roots of herbs a certain insect (Coccus Polonica) looking like drops of blood, and thought by them to be created on purpose to keep alive the remembrance of the foul murder of St. John the Baptist, and only to be met with on the morning of the day set apart for him by the Church. I believe the life of this insect is very ephemeral, [pg 057] but by no means restricted to the twenty-fourth of June.”[172]
Mouse-ear hawkweed (Hieracium pilosella) gathered for magical purposes at Midsummer.
Yet another plant whose root has been thought to yield the blood of St. John is the mouse-ear hawkweed (Hieracium pilosella), which grows very commonly in dry exposed places, such as gravelly banks, sunny lawns, and the tops of park walls. “It blossoms from May to the end of July, presenting its elegant sulphur-coloured flowers to the noontide sun, while the surrounding herbage, and even its own foliage, is withered and burnt up”;[173] and these round yellow flowers may be likened not inaptly to the disc of the great luminary whose light they love. At Hildesheim, in Germany, people used to dig up hawkweed, especially on the Gallows' Hill, when the clocks were striking noon on Midsummer Day; and the blood of St. John, which they found at the roots, was carefully preserved in quills for good luck. A little of it smeared secretly on the clothes was sure to make the wearer fortunate in the market that day.[174] According to some the plant ought to be dug up with a gold coin.[175] Near Gablonz, in Bohemia, it used to be customary to make a bed of St. John's flowers, as they were called, on St. John's Eve, and in the night the saint himself came and laid his head on the bed; next morning you could see the print of his head on the flowers, which derived a healing virtue from his blessed touch, and were mixed with the fodder of sick cattle to make them whole.[176] But whether these St. John's flowers were the mouse-ear hawkweed or not is doubtful.[177]
Mountain arnica gathered for magical purposes at Midsummer.