Some of the ancient Midsummer rites are still observed in Ireland. We have from an eyewitness some interesting items on the subject. People assemble and dance round fires, the children jump through the flames, and in former times coals were carried into corn fields to prevent blight. The peasants are not, of course, aware that the ceremony is a remnant of the worship of Baal. It is the opinion of not a few that the famous round towers of Ireland were intended for signal fires in connection with this worship.
In the pleasant pages of T. Crofton Croker’s “Researches in the South of Ireland,” are particulars of a custom, observed on the eve of St. John’s Day, of dressing up a broomstick as a figure, and carrying it about in the twilight from one cabin to the other, and suddenly pushing it in at the door, a proceeding which causes both surprise and merriment. The figure is known as Bredogue.
The superstitious inhabitants of the Isle of Man formerly, on Midsummer Eve, lighted fires to the windward side of fields, so that the smoke might pass over the corn. The cattle were folded, and around the animals was carried blazing grass or furze, as a preventative against the influence of witches. Many other strange practices and beliefs prevailed.
In Wales, in the earlier years of the present century, it was customary to fix sprigs of the plant called St. John’s wort over the doors of the cottages, and sometimes over the windows, in order to purify the houses and drive away all fiends and evil spirits. It was the common custom in England in the olden time for people to repair to the woods, break branches from the trees, and carry them to their homes with much delight, and place them over their doors. The ceremony, it is said, was to make good the Scripture prophecy respecting the Baptist, that many should rejoice at his birth.
Midsummer Eve has ever been famous as a time suitable for love divinations, and surely a few notes on love-lore cannot fail to find favour with our fair readers. In a popular story issued at the commencement of this century, from the polished pen of Hannah More, the heroine of the tale says that she would never go to bed on this night without first sticking up in her room the common plant called “Orpine,” or, more generally, “Midsummer Men,” as the bending of the leaves to the right or the left indicate to her if her lover was true or false. The following charming lines refer to the ceremony, and are translated from the German poet, and given in Chambers’s “Book of Days,” so we may infer that the same superstition prevails in that country:—
“The young maid stole through the cottage door,
And blushed as she sought the plant of power:
‘Thou silver glow-worm, oh, lend me thy light,
I must gather the mystic St. John’s wort to-night—
The wonderful herb, whose leaf will decide
If the coming year shall make me a bride.’
And the glow-worm came
With its silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John.
“And soon as the young maid her love-knot tied,
With noiseless tread,
To her chamber she sped,
Where the sceptral moon her white beams shed:
‘Bloom here, bloom here, thou plant of power,
To deck the young bride in her bridal hour!’
But it droop’d its head, that plant of power,
And died the mute death of the voiceless flower;
And a wither’d wreath on the ground it lay,
More meet for a burial than a bridal day.
And when a year was passed away,
All pale on her bier the young maid lay;
And the glow-worm came
With its silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John,
And they closed the cold grave o’er the maid’s cold clay.”
We gather from Thorpe’s “Northern Mythology,” that in Sweden it was the practice to place under the head of a youth or maiden nine kinds of flowers, with a full belief that they would dream of their sweethearts.
In England, in past times, the moss-rose was plucked with considerable ceremony on this eve for love divinations. Says the writer of a poem entitled “The Cottage Girl”:—
“The moss-rose that, at fall of dew,
Ere eve its duskier curtain drew,
Was freshly gathered from its stem,
She values as the ruby gem;
And, guarded from the piercing air,
With all an anxious lover’s care,
She bids it, for her shepherd’s sake,
Await the New Year’s frolic wake:
When faded in its altered hue,
She reads—the rustic is untrue!
But if its leaves the crimson paint,
Her sick’ning hopes no longer faint;
The rose upon her bosom worn,
She meets him at the peep of morn,
And lo! her lips with kisses prest,
He plucks it from her panting breast.”
“On the continent,” says Dyer, in his “Folk-Lore of Plants,” “the rose is still thought to possess mystic virtues in love matters, as in Thuringia, where the girls foretell their future by means of rose leaves.” It appears from a contributor to Chambers’s “Book of Days,” that there was brought some time ago under the notice of the Society of Antiquarians a curious little ring, which had been found in a ploughed field near Cawood, Yorkshire. It was inferred from its style and inscription to belong to the fifteenth century. The device consisted of two orpine plants joined by a true-love knot, with this motto above: Ma fiancée velt, i.e., “My sweetheart is willing or desirous.” We are told that the stalks of the plants were bent to each other, in token that the parties represented by them were to come together in marriage. The motto under the ring was Joye l’amour feu. It is supposed that it was originally made for some lover to give to his mistress on Midsummer Eve, as the orpine plant is connected with that time. The dumb cake is another item of Midsummer folk-lore:—