The same gentleman quotes and refers to the following illustration of the day:—
“It was the 24 June, (at Lödingen in Norway on the confines of Lapland) the festival of St. John the Baptist; and the people flocked from all quarters to sport the whole night round a blazing fire, kindled on the top of an adjacent hill: a practice common about the time of the solstice, to the whole of the Gothic tribes, being a vestige of that most ancient worship of the resplendant image of the divinity, the glorious luminary of day.”—Edinburgh Review, October, 1813, Art. Von Buch’s Travels in Norway and Lapland.
The Cow-Mass
At Dunkirk.
The emperor Charles V. found it expedient to exhibit to the turbulent inhabitants of Dunkirk, a show called the Cow-mass, on St. John’s-day. Whether it has been resumed is uncertain, but in 1789 it was described to have been represented at that time in the following manner:—
The morning is ushered in by the merry peals of the corillons, or bell-playing. The streets are very early lined with soldiers; and, by eight o’clock, every house-top and window is filled with spectators, at least forty thousand exclusive of inhabitants.
About ten o’clock, after high mass at the great church, the show begins, by the townsmen being classed according to the different trades, walking two and two, each holding a burning wax candle, and at least a yard long, and each dressed not in their best apparel, but in the oldest and oddest fashion of their ancestors.
After the several companies is a pageant containing an emblematical representation of its trade, and this pageant is followed by patron saints, most of which are of solid silver adorned with jewels. Bands of music, vocal and instrumental, attend the companies, the chorusses of which are very solemn.
Then followed the friars and regular clergy, two and two, in the habits of their different orders, slow in their motion, and with the appearance of solemn piety.