To enliven the subject a little, we may recur to recent or existing usages at this period of the year. It may be stated then on the authority of Mr. Brand’s collections, that the Eton scholars formerly had bonfires on St. John’s day; that bonfires are still made on Midsummer eve in several villages of Gloucester, and also in the northern parts of England and in Wales; to which Mr. Brand adds, that there was one formerly at Whiteborough, a tumulus on St. Stephen’s down near Launceston, in Cornwall. A large summer pole was fixed in the centre, round which the fuel was heaped up. It had a large bush on the top of it. Round this were parties of wrestlers contending for small prizes. An honest countryman, who had often been present at these merriments, informed Mr. Brand, that at one of them an evil spirit had appeared in the shape of a black dog, since which none could wrestle, even in jest, without receiving hurt: in consequence of which the wrestling was, in a great measure, laid aside. The rustics there believe that giants are buried in these tumuli, and nothing would tempt them to be so sacrilegious as to disturb their bones.
In Northumberland, it is customary on this day to dress out stools with a cushion of flowers. A layer of clay is placed on the stool, and therein is stuck, with great regularity, an arrangement of all kinds of flowers, so close as to form a beautiful cushion. These are exhibited at the doors of houses in the villages, and at the ends of streets and cross-lanes of larger towns, where the attendants beg money from passengers, to enable them to have an evening feast and dancing.[187]
One of the “Cheap Repository Tracts,” entitled, “Tawney Rachel, or the Fortune-Teller,” said to have been written by Miss Hannah More, relates, among other superstitious practices of Sally Evans, that “she would never go to bed on Midsummer eve, without sticking up in her room the well-known plant called Midsummer Men, as the bending of the leaves to the right, or to the left, would never fail to tell her whether her lover was true or false.” The Midsummer Men were the orpyne plants, which Mr. Brand says is thus elegantly alluded to in the “Cottage Girl,” a poem “written on Midsummer eve, 1786:”—
“The rustic maid invokes her swain;
And hails, to pensive damsels dear,
This eve, though direst of the year.
* * * * *
“Oft on the shrub she casts her eye,
That spoke her true-love’s secret sigh;
Or else, alas! too plainly told
Her true-love’s faithless heart was cold.”
In the “Connoisseur,” there is mention of divinations on Midsummer eve. “I and my two sisters tried the dumb-cake together: you must know, two must make it, two bake it, two break it, and the third put it under each of their pillows, (but you must not speak a word all the time), and then you will dream of the man you are to have. This we did: and to be sure I did nothing all night but dream of Mr. Blossom. The same night, exactly at twelve o’clock, I sowed hemp-seed in our back-yard, and said to myself,—‘Hemp-seed I sow, hemp-seed I hoe, and he that is my true-love come after me and mow.’ Will you believe me? I looked back, and saw him behind me, as plain as eyes could see him. After that, I took a clean shift and wetted it, and turned it wrong-side out, and hung it to the fire upon the back of a chair; and very likely my sweetheart would have come and turned it right again, (for I heard his step) but I was frightened, and could not help speaking, which broke the charm. I likewise stuck up two Midsummer Men, one for myself and one for him. Now if his had died away, we should never have come together, but I assure you his blowed and turned to mine. Our maid Betty tells me, that if I go backwards, without speaking a word, into the garden upon Midsummer eve, and gather a rose, and keep it in a clean sheet of paper, without looking at it till Christmas-day, it will be as fresh as in June; and if I then stick it in my bosom, he that is to be my husband will come and take it out. My own sister Hetty, who died just before Christmas, stood in the church porch last Midsummer eve, to see all that were to die that year in our parish; and she saw her own apparition.”
Gay, in one of his pastorals, says—
At eve last Midsummer no sleep I sought,
But to the field a bag of hemp-seed brought:
I scattered round the seed on every side,
And three times, in a trembling accent cried:—
“This hemp-seed with my virgin hand I sow,
Who shall my true love be, the crop shall mow.”
I straight looked back, and, if my eyes speak truth,
With his keen scythe behind me came the youth.
It is also a popular superstition that any unmarried woman fasting on Midsummer eve, and at midnight laying a clean cloth, with bread, cheese, and ale, and sitting down as if going to eat, the street-door being left open, the person whom she is afterwards to marry will come into the room and drink to her by bowing; and after filling the glass will leave it on the table, and, making another bow, retire.[188]