Customs of Mid-Summer's Eve (1813)

From: John Brand's Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain: Chiefly Illustrating The Origin of Our Vulgar and Provincial Customs, Ceremonies and Superstitions, [Arranged, revised and greatly enlarged by Sir Henry Ellis], George Bell and Sons, London: 1908, vol. 1, pp. 298-337 (Original ed. 1813).

THE Pagan rites of this festival at the summer solstice may be considered as a counterpart of those used at the winter solstice at Yule-tide. There is one thing that seems to prove this beyond the possibility of a doubt. In the old Runic Fasti, as will be shown elsewhere, a wheel was used to denote the festival of Christmas. The learned Gebelin derives Yule from a primitive word, carrying with it the general idea of revolution and a wheel ; and it was so called, says Bede, because of the return of the sun's annual course, after the winter solstice. This wheel is common to both festivities. Thus Durand, speaking of the rites of the Feast of St. John Baptist, informs us of this curious circumstance, that in some places they roll a wheel about, to signify that the sun, then occupying the highest place in the zodiac, is beginning to descend,[1] and in the amplified account of these ceremonies

given by the poet Naogeorgus, we read that this wheel was taken up to the top of a mountain and rolled down from thence ; and that, as it had previously been covered with straw, twisted about it and set on fire, it appeared at a distance as if the sun had been falling from the sky. And he farther observes, that the people imagine that all their ill luck rolls away from them together with this wheel.

The reader will join with me in thinking the following extract from the Homily De Festo Sancti Johannis Baptistae a pleasant piece of absurdity : — " In worshyp of Saint Johan the people waked at home, and made three maner of fyres : one was clene bones, and noo woode, and that is called a Bone Fyre ; another is clene woode, and no bones, and that is called a Wode Fyre, for people to sit and wake therby; the thirde is made of wode and bones, and it is callyd Saynt Johannys

fyre. The first fyre, as a great clerke Johan Belleth telleth he was in a certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete the which causid that dragons to go togyther in tokenynge that Johan dyed in brennynge love and charyte to God and man, and they that dye in charyte shall have parte of all good prayers, and they that do not, shall never be saved. Then as these dragons flewe in th'ayre they shed down to that water froth of ther kynde, and so envenymed the waters, and caused moche people for to take theyr deth therby, and many dyverse sykenesse. Wyse clerkes knoweth well that dragons hate nothyng more than the stenche of brennynge bones, and therefore they gaderyd as many as they mighte fynde, and brent them ; and so with the stenche thereof they drove away the dragons, and so they were brought out of greete dysease. The second fyre was made of woode, for that wyl brenne lyght, and wyll be seen farre. For it is the chefe of fyre to be seen farre, and betokennynge that Saynt Johan was a lanterne of lyght to the people. Also the people made blases of fyre, for that they shulde be seene farre, and specyally in the nyght, in token of St. Johan's having been seen from far in the spirit by Jeremiah. The third fyre of bones betokenneth Johan's martyrdome, for hys bones were brente, and how ye shall here." The Homilist accounts for this by telling us that after John's disciples had buried his body, it lay till Julian, the apostate emperor, came that way, and caused them to be taken up and burnt, "and to caste the ashes in the wynde, hopynge that he shuld never ryse again to lyfe."

Bourne tells us, that it was the custom in his time, in the North of England, chiefly in country villages, for old and young people to meet together and be merry over a large fire, which was made for that purpose in the open street. This, of whatever materials it consisted, was called a Bonefire.[2]

Over and above this fire they frequently leap, and play at various games, such as running, wrestling, dancing, &c.: this, however, is generally confined to the younger sort ; for the old ones, for the most part, sit by as spectators only of the vagaries of those who compose the "Lasciva decentius Betas," and enjoy themselves over their bottle, which they do not quit till midnight, and sometimes till cock-crow the next morning.

The learned Gebelin, in his Allegories Orientales, accounts in the following manner for the custom of making fires on Midsummer Eve : " Can one," says he, " omit to mention here the St. John Fires, those sacred fires kindled about mid-night, on the very moment of the solstice, by the greatest part as well of ancient as of modern nations; a religious ceremony of the most remote antiquity, which was observed for the prosperity of states and people, and to dispel every kind of evil ? The origin of this fire, which is still retained by so many nations, though enveloped in the mist of antiquity, is very simple : it was a Feu de Joie, kindled the very moment the year began ; for the first of all years, and the most ancient that we know of, began at this month of June. Thence the very name of this month, junior, the youngest, which is renewed ; while that of the preceding one is May, major, the ancient. Thus the one was the month of young people, while the other belonged to old men. These Feux de Joie were accompanied at the same time with vows and sacrifices for the prosperity of the people and the fruits of the earth. They danced also round this fire (for what feast is there without a dance?), and the most active leaped over it. Each on departing took away a firebrand, great or

small, and the remains were scattered to the wind, which, at the same time that it dispersed the ashes, was thought to expel every evil. When, after a long train of years, the year ceased to commence at this solstice, still the custom of making these fires at this time was continued by force of habit, and of those superstitious ideas that are annexed to it. Besides, it would have been a sad thing to have annihilated a day of joy in times when there were not many of them. Thus has the custom been continued and handed down to us."

So far our learned and ingenious foreigner. But I can by no means acquiesce with him in thinking that the act of leaping over these fires was only a trial of agility. A great deal of learning might be produced here to show farther that it was as much a religious act as making them.[3]

In the Gent. Mag. for May 1733, p. 225, a posthumous piece of Sir Isaac Newton, entitled Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, is cited, where that great philosopher, on Daniel ii. v. 38, 39, observes, that " the Heathens were delighted with the festivals of their gods, and unwilling to part with those ceremonies ; therefore Gregory, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea, in Pontus, to facilitate their conversion, instituted annual festivals to the saints and martyrs: hence the keeping of Christmas with ivy, feasting of Christmas with ivy, feasting, plays, and sports, came in the room of the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia; the celebrating of May-day with flowers, in the room of the Floralia; and the festivals to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and divers of the Apostles, in the room of the solemnities at the entrance of the sun into the signs of the zodiac in the old Julian Calendar."

" Of the fires we kindle in many parts of England at some stated times of the year, we know not certainly the rise, reason, or occasion, but they may probably be reckoned among the relics of the Druid superstitious fires. In Cornwall, the festival fires, called bonfires, are kindled on the Eve 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, tarr'd and pitch'd at the end, and make their perambulations round their fires, and go from village to village, carrying their torches before them ; and this is certainly the remains of the Druid superstition, for 'faces praeferre,' to carry lighted torches, was reckoned a kind of Gentilism, and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils: they were in the eye of the law 'accensores facularum,' and thought to sacrifice to the devil, and to deserve capital punishment."

In Ireland, " on the Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter, they always have in every town a bonfire late in the evenings, and carry about bundles of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long, and flame better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to the distant beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole country was on fire." (Sir Henry Piers's Description of Westmeath, 1682.) The author of the Survey of the South of Ireland, says, p. 232: " It is not strange that many Druid remains should still exist; but it is a little extraordinary that some of their customs should still be practised. They annually renew the sacrifices that used to be offered to Apollo, without knowing it. : On Midsummer's Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes with bonfires ; and round these they carry numerous torches, shouting and dancing, which affords a beautiful sight, and at the same time confirms the observation of Scaliger : ' En Irlande, ils sont quasi tons papistes, mais c'est Papaute meslee de Paganisme, comme partout.' Though historians had not given us the mythology of the Pagan Irish, and though they had not told us expressly that they worshipped Beal, or Bealin, and that this Beal was the sun and their chief god, it might nevertheless be investigated from this custom, which the lapse of so many centuries has not been able to wear away. I have, however, heard it lamented that the alteration

of the style had spoiled these exhibitions : for the Roman Catholics light their fires by the new style, as the correction originated from a pope ; and for that very same reason the Protestants adhere to the old."

I find the following, much to our purpose, in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1795, p. 124 : " The Irish have ever been worshippers of fire and of Baal, and are so to this day. This is owing to the Roman Catholics, who have artfully yielded to the superstitions of the natives, in order to gain and keep up an establishment, grafting Christianity upon Pagan rites. The chief festival in honour of the sun and fire is upon the 21st of June, when the sun arrives at the summer solstice, or rather begins its retrograde motion. I was so fortunate in the summer of 1782 as to have my curiosity gratified by a sight of this ceremony to a very great extent of country. At the house where I was entertained, it was told me that we should see at midnight the most singular sight in Ireland, which was the lighting fires in honour of the sun. Accordingly, exactly at midnight, the fires began to appear : and taking the advantage of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely extended view, I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the fires burning on every eminence which the country afforded. I had a farther satisfaction in learning, from undoubted authority, that the people danced round the fires, and at the close went through these fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through the fire; and the whole was conducted with religious solemnity." This is at the end of some Reflections by the late Rev. Donald M'Queen, of Kilmuir, in the Isle of Sky, on Ancient Customs preserved in that island.

The late Dr. Milner was opposed to the notion of the Irish having ever been worshippers of fire and of Baal. In An Inquiry into certain Vulgar Opinions concerning the Catholic Inhabitants and the Antiquities of Ireland, 1808, p. 100, he tells us that the " modern hunters after Paganism in Ireland think they have discovered another instance of it (though they derive this neither from the Celtic Druidesses nor the Roman Vestals, but from the Carthaginians or Phoenicians) in the fires lighted up in different ports of the country on the Eve of St. John the Baptist, or Midsummer-day. This they represent as the idolatrous worship of Baal, the Philistine god of

fire, and as intended by his pretended Catholic votaries to obtain from him fertility for the earth. The fact is, these-fires, on the eve of the 24th of June, were heretofore as common in England and all over the continent as they are now in Ireland, and have as little relation with the worship of Baal as the bonfires have which blaze on the preceding 4th of June, being the King's birthday : they are both intended to be demonstrations of joy. That, however, in honour of Christ's precursor is particularly appropriate, as alluding to his character of bearing witness to the light, John i. 7, and of his being himself a bright and shining light, John v. 35." The author of the Comical Pilgrim's Pilgrimage into Ireland, 1723; p. 92, says : " On the vigil of St. John the Baptist's Nativity, they make bonfires, and run along the streets and fields with wisps of straw blazing on long poles to purify the air, which they think infectious, by believing all the devils, spirits, ghosts, and hobgoblins fly abroad this night to hurt mankind. Farthermore, it is their dull theology to affirm the souls of all people leave their bodies on the eve of this feast, and take their ramble to that very place, where, by land or sea, a final separation shall divorce them for evermore in this world."[4]

Levinus Lemnius, in the work already quoted, tells us that the Low Dutch have a proverb, that " when men have passed a troublesome night's rest, and could not sleep at all, they say, we have, passed St. John Baptist's Night; that is, we have not taken' any sleep, but watched all night; and not only so, but we have been in great troubles, noyses, clamours, and stirs, that have held us waking:" "Some," he previously observes, " by a superstition of the Gentiles, fall down before his image, and hope to be thus freed from the epileps ; and they are further persuaded that if they can but gently go unto this saint's shrine, and not cry out disorderly, or hollow like madmen when they go, then they shall be a whole year free from this disease; but if they attempt to bite with their teeth the saint's head they go to kisse, and to revile him, then they shall be troubled with this disease every month, which commonly comes with the course of the moon, yet extream

juglings and frauds are wont to be concealed under this matter." English translat. fol. 1658, p. 28.

Leaping over the fires is mentioned among the superstitious rites used at the Palilia in Ovid's Fasti :

The Palilia were feasts instituted in honour of Pales, the goddess of shepherds (though Varro makes Pales masculine), on the calends of May. In order to drive away wolves from the fold and distempers from the cattle, the shepherds on this day kindled several heaps of straw in their fields, which they leaped over. See Sheridan's Persius, 2d edit. p. 18. The following passage may be thought, however, to confirm Gebelin : it is in an old collection of satyres, epigrams, &c. where this leaping over a Midsummer bonefire is mentioned among other pastimes :

In the Works of William Browne, ed. 1772, "The Shepherd's Pipe," iii. 53, occur the following lines :

with a note on Blessing Fire, informing us that " the Mid-summer fires are termed so in the west parts of England."

The following very curious passage on this head is extracted from Torreblanca's Demonology, p. 106: " Ignis lustrationis, quae in filiorum consecratione fiebat, sive expiatione, ad stabiliendam eorum fortunam, de qua agit sacra Parcemia, Reg. 4, c. 17. Et consecraverunt fibs suos, et filias per ignem. Quae fiebat ex transjectione per ignem, ex qua similiter felicis illi casus praenunciabant, quam superstitionem damnatam invenio Deut. c. 18. Nec inveniatur in te, qui lustrat filium suum, aut filiam ducens per ignem. In quo peccant Germani in successione pyrarum, quas pie in honorem D. Johannis accendunt, dum ad crepitum, fumum, flammae modum, et similia attendunt. Nam sunt reliquiae veteris paganismi, ut censet Conrad. Wissin de Divinat. c. 2. Necnon qui pyras

hujusmodi definitis vicibus se circumire et transilire debere putant in futuri mali averruncatione, ut tradit Gliucas, p. 2. Anna]. fol. 269, quod ut hodie, ita teste Ovid, lib. iv, Fastor.

In a most rare tract, entitled Perth Assembly, 1619, p. 83, probably printed in Scotland, but without printer's name, we read, " Bellarmine telleth us (De Reliquiis, c. 4), Ignis accendi solet ad lmtitiam significandam etiam in rebus prophanis, that fire useth to be kindled even in civil and profane things. Scaliger calleth the candels and torches lightened upon Midsomer Even, the foote steps of auncient gentility." De Emendat. Tempor. lib. vii. p. 713.

Stow, in his Survey of London, tells us, "that on the vigil of St. John Baptist, every man's door being shadowed with green birch,[5] long fennel, St. John's wort,[6] orpine, 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," he adds, " hung out branches of iron, curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps lighted at once." He mentions also bonefires in the streets, every man bestowing wood and labour (without any notice taken of bones) towards them. He seems, however, to hint that they were kindled on this occasion to purify the air.

In a most curious sermon preached at Blandford Forum, Dorsetshire, Jan. 17, 1570, by William Kethe, minister, and dedicated to Ambrose Earl of Warwick, 8vo. p. 18, speaking of the Jews, he says, " for the synnes they daylie committed, they would be very busie in offryng sacrifices and exercising themselves in ceremonies ;" adding, " a lyke kynde of policie was practised by the Papistes in the tyme of Poperie (in England) to bynde God to forgeve them theyr sinnes. For whereas, in the tyme of Christmasse, the disorders were marvelous in those dayes (and how it is now God seeth), at Candlemasse, which some counte the ende of Christmasse, the Papistes would be even with God, by the tyme they had offered hym a bribe, and such a bribe (beyng a candle or taper) as a very meane officer would take foule scorne of, though he could do a man but small pleasure in his sute. Shroft Tuesday was a day of great glottonie, surfetting, and dronkennes, but by Ashe Wensday at night, they thought God to be in their debt. On Good Friday they offered unto Christ egges and bacon, to be in hys favour till Easter Day was past. The sinnes committed betwene Easter and Whytsontyde they were fullye discharged by the pleasaunt walkes and processyons in the rogyng, I should say Rogation Weeke. What offences soever happened from that tyme to Midsommer, the fumes of the fiers dedicated to John, Peter, and Thomas Becket the traytor, consumed them. And as for all disorders from that tyme to the begynnyng of Christmasse agayne, they were in this countrey all roonge away, upon All Halloun Day and All Soule's Day, at night last past." He adds, at page 20, " So sayth God to the brybyng Papistes, who requireth these thynges at your handes whiche I never commaunded, as your candles at Candlemasse, your Popish penaunce on Ash Wensday, your egges and bacon on Good Friday, your gospeller at superstitious crosses, decked lyke idols, your fires at Midsom-

mer, and your ringyng at Allhallountide for all Christen soules ? I require, sayth God, a sorrowful and repentaunt hart ; to he mercyfull to the poore," &c.

In a Royal Household Account, communicated by Craven Ord, of the Exchequer, I find the following article : " 23 June,. 8 Hen. VII. Item, to the making of the Bonefuyer on Middesomer Eve, xs." [In a MS. at the Rolls House, A. v. 15, dated July 1st, 1 Hen. VIII., " Item, to the pages of the hall, for makyng of the Kinges bonefyre upon Mydsomer evyn, xs."j

Douce says he does not know whether Fraunce, in the following passage in his Countesse of Pembroke's Ivy Church, alludes to the Midsummer Eve fires:

Thou for whose feast-dayes great cakes ordayned Amyntas, Supping mylk with cakes, and ****'ing mylk to the bonefyre ?"

The learned Moresin[7] appears to have been of opinion that the custom of leaping over these fires is a vestige of the ordeal, where to be able to pass through fires with safety was held to be an indication of innocence.[8] To strengthen the probability of this conjecture, we may observe that not only the young and vigorous, but even those of grave characters used to leap over them, and there was an interdiction of ecclesiastical

In the Appendix No. II. to Pennant's Tour, Shaw, in his Account of Elgin and the Shire of Murray, tells us, " that in the middle of June, farmers go round their corn with hulloing torches, in memory of the Cerealia."

Every Englishman has heard of the " dance round our coal-fire," which receives illustration from the probably ancient practice of dancing round the fires in our Inns of Court (and perhaps other halls in great men's houses). This practice was still in 1733 observed at an entertainment at the Inner Temple Hall, on Lord Chancellor Talbot's taking leave of the house, when " the master of the revels took the chancellor by the hand, and he, Mr. Page, who with the judges, serjeants, and benchers, danced round the coal fire, according to the old ceremony, three times ; and all the times the ancient song, with music, was sung by a man in a bar gown." See Wynne's Eunomus, iv. 107. This dance is ridiculed in the dance in the Rehearsal.

Mr. Douce has a curious French print, entitled "L'este le Feu de la St. Jean ;" Mariette ex. In the centre is the fire made of wood, piled up very regularly, and having a tree stuck in the midst of it. Young men and women are represented dancing round it hand in hand. Herbs are stuck in their hats and caps, and garlands of the same surround their waists, or are slang across their shoulders. A boy is represented carrying a large bough of a tree. Several spectators are looking on. The following lines are at the bottom :

The sixth Council of Constantinople, A.D. 680, by its 65th canon (cited by Prynne in his Histriomastix, p. 585), has the following interdiction : "those bonefires that are kindled by certaine people on new moones before their shops and houses, over which also they are ridiculously and foolishly to leape, by a certaine antient custome, we command them from henceforth to cease. Whoever therefore shall doe any such thing; if he be a clergyman, let him be deposed ; if a layman, let him be excommunicated ; for in the Fourth Book of the Kings, it is thus written,-- ' And Manasseh built an altar to all the

hoast of heaven, in the two courts of the Lord's house, and made his children to passe through the fire,' " &c. Prynne observes upon this : " Bonefires, therefore, had their originall from this idolatrous custome, as this General Councell hath defined ; therefore all Christians should avoid them." And the Synodus Francica under Pope Zachary, A.D. 742, cited ut supra, p. 587, inhibits "those sacrilegious fires which they call Nedfri (or bonefires), and all other observations of the Pagans whatsoever."

" Leaping o'er a Midsummer bonefire" is mentioned amongst other games in the Garden of Delight, 1658, p. 76. A clergyman of Devonshire informed me that, in that county, the custom of making bonfires on Midsummer Eve, and of leaping over them, still continues. In the Statistical Account of Scotland, xxi. 145, parish of Mongahitter, it is said : "The Midsummer Even fire, a relic of Druidism, was kindled in some parts of this county."

The subsequent extract from the ancient Calendar of the Romish Church, so often cited in this work, shows us what doings there used to be at Rome on the Eve and Day of St. John the Baptist.

Waters are swum in during the night, and are brought in vessels that hang for purposes of divination.

Monsieur Bergerac, in his Satyrical Characters and Handsome Descriptions, in Letters, translated out of the French by a Person of Honour, 1658, p. 45, puts into the mouth of a magician the following very curious catalogue of superstitions on the Continent : " I teach the shepherd the woolf's paternoster, and to the cunning men how to turn the sieve. I send St. Hermes fire to the marches and rivers, to drown travellers. I make the fairies to dance by moonelight. I encourage the gamesters to look under the gallows for the foure of clubs. I send at midnight the ghosts out of the churchyard, wrapt in a sheet, to demand of their heires the performance of those vows and promises they made to them at their deaths. I command the spirits to haunt the uninhabited castles, and to strangle those that come to lodge there, till some resolute fellow compels them to discover to him the treasure. I make those that I will enrich find hidden wealth. I cause the thieves to burn candles of dead men's grease to lay the hoasts asleep, while they rob their houses. I give the flying money, that returnes again to the pocket after 'tis spent. I give those annulets to footmen that enable them to go two hundred miles a day. "Tis I, that invisible, tumble the dishes and bottles up and down the house without breaking or spoiling them. I teach old women to cure a feaver by words. I waken the country fellow on St. John's eve to gather his hearb, fasting and in silence. I teach the witches to take the form of woolves and eate children, and when any one hath cut off one of their legs (which prove to be a man's arme), I forsake them when they are discovered, and leave them in the power of justice. I send to discontented persons a tall black man; who makes them promises of great riches, and other felicities, if they'll give themselves to him. I blind them that take contracts of him, and when they demand thirty years time, I

make them see the (3) before the (0) which I have placed after. 'Tis I that strangle those that when they have called me up, give me an haire, an old shoe, or a straw. I take away from those dedicated churches the stones that have not been paid for. I make the witches seem to those that are invited to Sabat, nothing but a troope of cats, of which Marcou (a gib-cat) is prince. I send all the confederates to the offering, and give them the goates taile (seated on a jointstoole) to kisse. I treat them splendidly, but give them no salt to their meat; and if any stranger, ignorant in the customes, gives God thanks, I cause all things to vanish, and leave him five hundred miles from his owne home, in a desart full of nettles and thornes. I send to old letchers beds succubusses, and to the whorish, incubusses. I convay hob-goblins in shape of a long piece of marble, to lye by those that went to bed without making the signe of the crosse. I teach negromancers to destroy their enemies by making a little image in waxe, which they throwing into the fire, or pricking, the original is sensible of those torments that they expose the image to. I make witches insensible in those parts where the ram hath set his Seale. I give a secret virtue to nolite fieri, when 'tis said backwards, that it hinders the butter from coming. I teach husbandmen to lay under the grounds of that sheep-fold which he hath a mind to destroy; a lock of haire, or a toade, with three curses, that destroyes all the sheep that passe over it. I teach the shepherds to tye a bridegroomes point the marriage day, when the priest sayes conjunego vos. I give that mony that is found by the leaves of an old oak. I lend magitians a familiar that keepes them from undertaking anything without leave from Robin Good-fellow. I teach how to break the charmes of a person bewicht, to kneade the triangular cake of Saint Woolfe, and to give it in almes to the first poore body. I cure sick persons of the hob-thrush, by giving them a blow with a forke just between the two eyes. I make the witches sensible of the blowea that are given them with an elder-stick. I let loose the hob-goblin at the advents of Christmass ; and command him to rowle a barrell, or draw a chaine along the streets, that he may wring off their necks that look out at the window. I teach the composition of the charms, seales, talismans, spells, of the magique looking glasses, and of the inchanted figures.

I teach them to find the misseltoe of the new yeare, the wandring hearbs, the gamahely, and the magnetique plaster. I send the goblins, the shod-mule, the spirits, the hob-goblins, the haggs, the night bats, the scraggs, the breake-neckes, the black men and the white women, the fantasms, the apparitions, the sear-crowes, the bug-beares, and the shaddowes : in fine, I am the divel of Vauvert, the Jew-errant, and the grant huntsman of Fountain-bleau Forrest."

Mr. Douce has a curious Dutch mezzotinto, representing one of the months " Junius." " C. Dusart. inv. J. Cole ex Amstelod." There is a young figure (I think a boy dressed in girl's clothes) with a garland of flowers about her head ; two rows, seemingly of beads, hang round her neck, and so loosely as to come round a kind of box, which she holds with both hands, perhaps to solicit money. She has long hair flowing down her back and over her shoulders. A woman is represented bawling near her, holding in her right hand a bough of some plant or tree, pointing out the girl to the notice of the spectators with her left. She has a thrift-box hung before her. Another woman holds the girl's train with her right hand, and lays her left on her shoulder. She too appears to be bawling. The girl herself looks modestly down to the ground. Something like pieces of money hangs in loose festoons on her petticoat.

"Fern-seed," says Grose, "is looked on as having great magical powers, and must be gathered on Midsummer Eve. A person who went to gather it reported that the spirits whisked by his ears, and sometimes struck his hat and other parts of his body ; and, at length, when he thought he had got a good quantity of it, and secured it in papers and a box, when he came home he found both empty." [Bovet, in his Pandaemonium, 1684, gives a narrative of some ladies who say, " We had been told divers times that if we fasted on Midsummer Eve, and then at 12 o'clock at night laid a cloth on the table with bread and cheese, and a cup of the best beer, setting ourselves down as if we were going to eat, and leaving the door of the room open, we should see the persons whom we should afterwards marry, come into the room and drink to us."] Torreblanca, in his Daemonologia, 1623, p. 150, suspects those persons of witchcraft who gather fern-seed on this night : "Vel si reperiantur in nocte S. Joannis colligendo grana

A respectable countryman at Heston, in Middlesex, informed me in June, 1793, that, when he was a young man, he was often present at the ceremony of catching the fern-seed at midnight on the eve of St. John Baptist. The attempt, he said, was often unsuccessful, for the seed was to fall into the plate of its own accord, and that too without shaking the plant.

Dr. Rowe, of Launceston, informed me, Oct. 17th, 1790, of some rites with fern-seed which were still observed at that place. " Fern," says Gerard, "is one of those plants which have their seed on the back of the leaf, so small as to escape the sight. Those who perceived that fern was propagated by semination, and yet could never see the seed, were much at a loss for a solution of the difficulty ; and, as wonder always endeavours to augment itself, they ascribed to fern-seed many strange properties, some of which the rustick virgins have not yet forgotten or exploded." This circumstance relative to fern-seed is alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher's Fair Maid of the Inn :

Again, in Philemon Holland's Translation of Pliny, book xxvii. ch. 9 : "Of ferne be two kinds, and they beare neither floure nor seed." The ancients, who often paid more attention to received opinions than to the evidence of their senses, believed that fern bore no seed. Our ancestors imagined that this plant produced seed which was invisible. Hence, from an extraordinary mode of reasoning, founded on the fantastic doctrine of signatures, they concluded that they who possessed the secret of wearing this seed about them would become in

visible. This superstition Shakespeare's good sense taught him to ridicule. It was also supposed to seed in the course of a single night, and is called, in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, 1613,

Absurd as these notions are, they were not wholly exploded in the time of Addison. He laughs at a doctor who was arrived at the knowledge of the green and red dragon, and had discovered the female fern-seed. (Tatler, No. 240.)

In the curious tract, entitled Plaine Percevall the Peace-maker of England, temp. Eliz. 4to. is this passage: " I thinke the mad slave hath tasted on a ferne-stalke, that he walkes so invisible." Butler alludes to this superstitious notion, Hudibras, Part III. Cant. iii. 3, 4:

Levinus Lemnius tells us: " They prepare fern gathered in the summer solstice, pulled up in a tempestuous night, rue, trifoly, vervain, against magical impostures." English Translat. 1658, p. 392. In a most rare little book, entitled a Dialogue or Communication of Two Persons, devysed or set forthe, in the Latin Tonge; by the noble and famose clarke Desiderius Erasmus, intituled, the Pylgremage of pure Devotyon, newly translatyd into Englishe, printed about 1551, is the following curious passage: " Peraventure they ymagyne the symylytude of a tode to be there, evyn as we suppose when we cutte the fearne-stalke there to be an egle, and evyn as chyldren (whiche they see nat indede) in the clowdes, thynke they see dragones spyttynge fyre, and liylles flammynge with fyre, and armyd men encounterynge."

It was the custom in France, on Midsummer Eve, for the people to carry about brazen vessels, which they use for culinary purposes, and to beat them with sticks for the purpose of making a great noise. A superstitious notion prevailed also with the common people, that if it rains about this time, the filberts will be spoiled that season.[11]

In Bucelini Historiae Universalis Nucleus, 1659, there is a calendar entitled "Calendarium Astronomicum priscum," with " Observationes rusticm" at the end of every month, among which I find the following : " Pluvias S. Joannis 40 dies pluvii sequuntur, certa nucum pernicies." And again: " 2 Julii pluvia 40 dies similes conducit."

Bourne cites from the Trullan Council a singular species of divination on St. John Baptist's Eve : "On the 23d of June, which is the Eve of St. John Baptist, men and women were accustomed to gather together in the evening by the sea-side, or in some certain houses, and there adorn a girl, who was her parents' first-begotten child, after the manner of a bride. Then they feasted and leaped after the manner of Bacchanals, and danced and shouted as they were wont to do on their holy-days : after this they poured into a narrowneck'd vessel some of the sea-water, and put also into it certain things belonging to each of them. Then, as if the devil gifted the girl with the faculty of telling future things, they would enquire with a loud voice about the good or evil fortune that should attend them : upon this the girl would take out of the vessel the first thing that came to hand, and, shew it, and give it to the owner, who, upon receiving it, was so foolish as to imagine himself wiser, as to the good or evil fortune that should attend him." (The Words of the Scholiast, Can. 65. in Syn. Trul. in Bals. P. 440. Bourne, chap. xi.)

Midsummer-eve festivities are still kept up in Spain. "At Alcala, in Andalusia," says Dalrymple, in his Travels through Spain and Portugal, "at twelve o'clock at night, we were much alarmed with a violent knocking at the door. ' Quein es ?' says the landlord ; ' Isabel de San Juan,' replied a voice: he got up, lighted the lamp, and opened the door, when five or six sturdy fellows, armed with fusils, and as many women, came in. After eating a little bread, and drinking some brandy, they took their leave ; and we found that, it being the Eve of St. John, they were a set of merry girls with their lovers, going round the village to congratulate their friends on the approaching festival." A gentleman who had resided long in Spain informed me that in the villages they light up fires on St. John's Eve, as in England.

The boys of Eton School had anciently their bonfires at Midsummer, on St. John's Day. Bonfires were lately, or still

In the Ordinary of the Company of Cooks at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1575, I find the following clause : "And alsoe that the said Felloship of Cookes shall yearelie of theire owne cost and charge mainteigne and keep the bone-fires, according to the auntient custome of the said towne on the Sand-hill; that is to say, one bone-fire on the Even of the Feast of the Nativitie of St. John Baptist, commonly called Midsomer Even, and the other on the Even of the Feast of St. Peter the Apostle, if it shall please the maior and aldermen of the said towne for the time being to have the same bone-fires." In Dekker's Seaven deadly Sinnes of London, 1606, speaking of "Candle-light, or the Nocturnall Triumph," he says : "what expectation was there of his coming ? Setting aside the bon-fiers, there is not more triumphing on Midsommer Night." In Langley's Polydore Vergil, f. 103, we read : " Our Midsomer bonefyres may seme to have comme of the sacrifices of Ceres, Goddesse of Corne, that men did solemnise with fyres, trusting thereby to have more plenty and aboundance of corne."

They still prevail also, on the same occasion, in the northern parts of England.[12] Pennant's Manuscript, which I have so often cited, informs us that small bonfires are made on the Eve of St. John Baptist, at Darowen, in Wales. Hutchinson, in his History of Northumberland, ii. 15, says it is usual to raise fires on the tops of high hills, and in the villages, and sport and dance around them. On Whiteborough (a large tumulus with a fosse round it), on St. Stephen's Down, near Launceston, in Cornwall, as I learnt at that place in October 1790, there was formerly a great bonfire on Midsummer Eve: 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.[13] Round this were parties of wrestlers contending for small prizes. An honest countryman informed me, who had often

been present at these merriments, 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 hereabout believe that giants are buried in these tumuli, and nothing would tempt them to be so sacrilegious as to disturb their bones. [The custom of lighting fires on Midsummer Eve is still observed in many parts of Cornwall. On these occasions, the fishermen and others dance about them, and sing appropriate songs. The following has been sung for a long series of years at Penzance and the neighbourhood, and is taken down from the recitation of a leader of a west country choir, as communicated by Mr. Sandys to Dixon's Ancient Poems, p. 189 ;

Hutchinson, in his History of Northumberland, mentions another custom used on this day; it is, "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" (this custom is very prevalent in the city of Durham), "where the attendants beg money from passengers, to enable them to have an evening feast and dancing." He adds "This custom is evidently derived from the Ludi Compitalii of the Romans; this appellation was taken from the compita, or cross lanes, where they were instituted and celebrated by the multitude assembled before the building of Rome. Servius Tullius revived this festival after it had been neglected for many years. It was the feast of the lares, or household gods, who presided as well over houses as streets. This mode of adorning the seat or couch of the lares was beautiful, and the idea of reposing them on aromatic flowers and beds of roses was excellent. We are not told there was any custom among the Romans of strangers or passengers offering gifts. Our modern usage of all these old customs terminates in seeking to gain money for a merry night."

Dr. Plott, in his History of Oxfordshire, p. 349, mentions a custom at Burford in that county (yet within memory), of making a dragon yearly, and carrying it up and down the town in great jollity, on Midsummer Eve; to which, he says, not knowing for what reason, they added a giant. It is curious to find Dr. Plott attributing the cause of this general custom to a particular event. In his Oxfordshire, f. 203, he tells us " that, about the year 750, a battle was fought near Burford, perhaps on the place still called Battle-Edge, west of the town towards Upton, between Cuthred or Cuthbert, a tributary king of the West Saxons, and Ethelbald, king of Mercia, whose insupportable exactions the former king not being able to endure, he came into the field against Ethelbald, met, and overthrew him there, winning his banner, whereon was depicted a golden dragon : in remembrance of which victory he supposes the custom was, in all likelihood, first instituted. So far from being confined to Burford, we find our dragon flying on this occasion in Germany : thus Aubanus, p. 270: " Ignus fit, cui orbiculi quidam lignei perforati imponuntur, qui quunt inflammanttur, flexilibus virgis praefixi,

arte et vi in aerem supra Moganum amnem excutiuntur: Diaconem igneum volare putant, qui prius non viderunt."

The dragon is one of those shapes which fear has created to itself. They who gave it life, have, it seems, furnished it also with the feelings of animated nature : but our modern philosophers are wiser than to attribute any noxious qualities in 'water to dragon's sperm. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. 1788, vi. 392, speaking of the times of the British Arthur, tells us that " Pilgrimage and the holy wars introduced into Europe the specious miracles of Arabian magic ; fairies and giants, flying dragons, &c. were blended with the more simple fictions of the west."

It appears from the Husbandman's Practice, or Prognostication for ever, 1664, p. 105, that a kind of fiery meteors in the air were called burning dragons. In a curious book, entitled a Wonderful History of all the Storms, Hurricanes, Earth-quakes, 1704, p. 66, is the following account of " Fiery Dragons and Fiery Drakes appearing in the air, and the cause of them. These happen when the vapours of a dry and fiery nature are gathered in a heap in the air, which, ascending to the region of cold, are forcibly beat back with a violence, and by a vehement agitation kindled into a flame ; then the highest part which was ascending, being more subtile and thin, appeareth as a dragon's neck smoaking ; for that it was lately bowed in the repulse, or made crooked, to represent the dragon's belly ; the last part, by the same repulse, turned upwards, maketh the tail, appearing smaller, for that it is both further off, and also the cloud bindeth it, and so with impetuous motion it flies terribly in the air, and sometimes turneth to and fro, and where it meeteth with a cold cloud it beateth it back, to the great terror of them that behold it. Some call it a fire-drake, others have fancied it is the devil, and in popish times of ignorance, various superstitious discourses have gone about it." In a rare work by Thomas Hill, entitled a Contemplation of Mysteries, printed about 1590, is a chapter " Of the Flying Dragon in the Ayre, what the same is" (with a neat wooden print of it). Here he tells us : " The flying dragon is when a fume kindled appeereth bended, and is in the middle wrythed like the belly of a dragon : but in the fore part for the narrownesse, it representeth the figure of the neck, from whence the sparkes are

breathed or forced forth with the same breathing." He concludes his wretched attempt to explain it, with attributing his phenomenon to the "pollicie of devils and inchantments of the wicked." Asserting that " in the yere 1532, in manye countries were dragons crowned seene flying by flocks or companies in the ayre, having swines snowtes ; and some-times were there seene foure hundred flying togither in a companie."

In the Statistical Account of Scotland, 1793, vi. 467, parish of New-Machar, Presbytery and Synod of Aberdeen, we read " In the end of November and beginning of December last (1792), many of the country people observed very uncommon phenomena in the air (which they call dragons) of a red fiery colour, appearing in the north, and flying rapidly towards the east, from which they concluded, and their conjectures were right, a course of load winds and boisterous weather would follow."

In the same work, xiii. 99, parish of Strathmartin, county of Forfar, we read : " In the north end of the parish is a large stone, called Martin's Stone. Tradition says that, at the place where the stone is erected, a dragon, which had devoured nine maidens (who had gone out on a Sunday evening, one after another, to fetch spring-water to their father), was killed by a person called Martin, and that hence it was called Martin's Stone." Borlase tells us, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 137, that in most parts of Wales, and throughout all Scotland, and in Cornwall, we find it a common opinion of the vulgar, that about Midsummer Eve (tho' in the time they do not all agree), it is usual for snakes to meet in companies, and that by joyning heads together and hissing, a kind of bubble is form' d, which the rest, by continual hissing, blows on till it passes quite through the body, and then it immediately hardens, and resembles a glass-ring, which, whoever finds (as some old women and children are persuaded) shall prosper in all his undertakings. The rings thus generated are call'd Gleinau Nadroeth ; in English, Snake-stones." In the printed Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Margaret, Westminster, (Illustrations of the Manners and Expenses of Ancient Times in England, 1797, p. 3) under the year 1491, are the following items: " Item, Received of the Churchwardens of St. Sepulcre's for the Dragon, 2s. 8d. Item, Paid for dressing of the Dragon and for packthread, --s. --d. Ibid. p. 4, under

1502: Item, to Michell Wosebyche for making of viij. Dragons, 6s. 8d. In King's 'Vale Royal of England, p. 208, we learn that Henry Hardware, Esq., mayor of Chester in 1599, " for his time, altered many antient customs, as the shooting for the sheriff's breakfast; the going of the Giants at Midsommer, &c. and would not suffer any playes, bear-baits, or bull-bait." Ormerod, in his History of Cheshire, i. 210, says : " 1677, June 7. The antient Midsummer shows ordered to be abolished at Chester from that time forward." Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie, 1589, p. 128, speaks of "Midsommer pageants to London, where, to make the people wonder, are set forth great and uglie gyants, marching as if they were alive, and armed at all points,[14] but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeeping, do guilefully discover, and turne to a greate derision." In Smith's Latin poem, De Urbis Londini Incendio, 1667, the carrying about of pageants once a year is confirmed :

And in Marston's play, called the Dutch Courtezan, we read : " Yet all will scarce make me so high as one of the gyant's stilts that stalks before my Lord Maior's pageants." This circumstance may perhaps explain the origin of the enormous figures still preserved in Guildhall. From the New View of London, ii. 607, it should appear that the statues of Gog and Magog were renewed in that edifice in 1706. The older figures, however, are noticed by Bishop Hall, in his Satires, who, speaking of an angry poet, says he---

Stow mentions the older figures as representations of a Briton and a Saxon. See Pennant's London, 1793, p. 374. See also Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, iii. 525 ; and the Picture of London, 1804, p. 131. The giants are thus noticed in the Latin poem, Londini quod reliquum, 1667, p.7:

Bragg says, in his Observer, Dec, 25, 1706, " I was hemmed in, like a wrestler in Moorfields ; the cits begged the colours taken at Ramilies, to put up in Guildhall. When I entered the Hall, I protest, Master, I never saw so much joy in the countenances of the people in my life, as in the cits on this occasion ; nay, the very giants stared at the colours with all the eyes they had, and smiled as well as they could."

In Grosley's Tour to London, translated by Nugent, 1772, ii. 88, we find the following passage : " The English have, in general, rambling tastes for the several objects of the polite arts, which does not even exclude the Gothic : it still prevails, not only in ornaments of fancy, but even in some modern buildings. To this taste they are indebted for the preservation of the two giants in Guildhall. These giants, in comparison of which the Jacquemard of St. Paul's at Paris is a bauble, seem placed there for no other end but to frighten children : the better to answer this purpose, care has frequently been taken to renew the daubing on their faces and arms. There might be some reason for retaining those monstrous figures if they were of great antiquity, or if, like the stone which served as the first throne to the kings of Scotland, and is carefully preserved at Westminster, the people looked upon them as the palladium of the nation ; but they have nothing to recommend them, and they only raise, at first

view, a surprise in foreigners, who must consider them as a production in which both Danish and Saxon barbarism are happily combined." In the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Andrew Hubbard parish, in the city of London, A.D. 1533 to 1535, we have : " Receyvyd for the Jeyantt xix.d. Receyvyd for the Jeyantt ijs. viijd.," perhaps alluding to some parochial Midsummer pageant.

If the following Scottish custom, long ago forgotten in the city of Edinburgh, is not to be referred to the Midsummer Eve festivities, I know not in what class to rank it. Warton, in his History of English Poetry, ii. 310, speaking of Sir David Lyndesay, a Scottish poet, under James the Fifth, tells us : " Among ancient peculiar customs now lost, he mentions a superstitious idol annually carried about the streets of Edinburgh :

" He also speaks of the people flocking to be cured of various Infirmities, to the auld rude, or cross of Korrail." Warton explains " aid stok-image" to mean an old image made of a stock of wood : as he does " talbrone" by tabor. The above passage is from Sir David Lyndesay's Monarchie.

On the subject of giants, it may be curious to add, that Dr. Milner, in his History of Winchester, 1798, p. 8, speaking of the gigantic statue that inclosed a number of human victims, among the Gauls, gives us this new intelligence concerning it : " In different places on the opposite side of the channel, where we are assured that the rites in question prevailed, amongst the rest at Dunkirk and Douay, it has been an immemorial custom, on a certain holiday in the year, to build up an immense figure of basket-work and canvas, to the height of forty or fifty feet, which, when properly painted and dressed, represented a huge giant, which also contained a number of living men within it, who raised the same, and caused it to move from place to place. The popular tradition

was, that this figure represented a certain Pagan giant, who used to devour the inhabitants of these places, until he was killed by the patron saint of the same. Have not we here a plain trace of the horrid sacrifices of Druidism offered up to Saturn, or Moloch, and of the beneficial effect of Christianity in destroying the same ?"

In a most rare poem, entitled London's Artillery, by Richard Niccolls, 1616, p. 97, is preserved the following description of the great doings anciently used in the streets of London on the Vigils of St. Peter and St. John Baptist, " when," says our author, " that famous marching-watch, consisting of two thousand, beside the standing watches, were maintained in this citie. It continued from temp. Henrie III. to the 31st of Henry VIII., when it was laid down by licence from the king, and revived (for that year only) by Sir Thomas Gresham, Lord Mayor, 2 Edw. VI."

A note says : " King Henrie the Eighth, approving this marching watch, as an auncient commendable custome of this cittie, lest it should decay thro' neglect or covetousnesse, in the first yeare of his reigne came privately disguised in one of his guard's coates into Cheape, on Midsommer Even ; and seeing the same at that time performed to his content, to countenance it, and make it more glorious by the presence of his person, came after on St. Peter's Even, with Queen Katherine, attended by a noble traine, riding in royall state to the King's Heade in Cheape, there to behold the same ; and after, anno 15 of his reigne, Christerne, King of Denmarke, with his Queene, being then in England, was conducted through the cittie to the King's-heade, in Cheape, there to see the same."

Douce's MS. notes say, "It appears that a watch was formerly kept in the city of London on Midsummer Eve, probably to prevent any disorders that might be committed on the above occasion. It was laid down in the 20th year of Henry VIII. See Hall's Chronicle at the latter end of the year. The Chronicles of Stow and Byddell assign the sweating sickness as a cause for discontinuing the watch." Niccols says, the watches on Midsummer and St. Peter's Eve were laid down by licence from the king, "for that the cittie had then bin charged with the leavie of a muster of 15,000 men." We read in Byddell's Chronicle, under the year 1527: "This yere was the sweatinge sicknesse, for the which cause there

wan no watche at Mydsommer." See also Grafton's Chronicle, p. 1290, in ann. 1547, when the watch appears to have been kept both on St. John Baptist's Eve and on that of St. Peter.

[It was again prohibited in 1539, and appears to have been discontinued from that period till 1547, when it was revived under the mayoralty of Sir John Gresham, with more than usual splendour. Mr. Gage Rokewode quotes the following entry from Lady Long's household book, relating to this ceremony : "Paid to xxx. men for weying of your La : harneys on Midsommer eve and St. Peter's eve, that is to say x. s. to my Lord Mayor and xx. to Sir Roland Hill."]

Sir John Smythe's " Instructions, Observations, and Orders Militarie," 1595, p. 129, say: "An ensigne-bearer in the field, carrieng his ensigne displayed, ought to carrie the same upright, and never, neither in towne nor field, nor in sport, nor earnest, to fetche flourishes about his head with his ensigne-staff, and taffata of his ensigne, as the ensigne-bearers of London do upon Midsommer Night."

" In Nottingham," says an old authority quoted by Deering, p. 123, "by an antient custom, they keep yearly a genera. watch every Midsummer Eve at night, to which every inhabitant of any ability sets forth a man, as well voluntaries as those who are charged with arms, with such munition as they have ; some pikes, some muskets, calivers, or other guns, some partisans, holberts, and such as have armour send their servants in their armour. The number of these are yearly almost two hundred, who at sun-setting meet on the Row, the most open part of the town, where the Mayor's Serjeant at Mace gives them an oath, the tenor whereof followeth, in these words : 'They shall well and truly keep this town till to-morrow at the sun-rising ; you shall come into no house without license or cause reasonable. Of all manner of casualties, of fire, of crying of children, you shall due warning make to the parties, as the case shall require. You shall due search make of all manner of affrays, bloudsheds, outcrys, and all other things that be suspected,' &c. Which done, they all march in orderly array through the principal parts of the town, and then they are sorted into several companies, and designed to several parts of the town, where they are to keep the watch until the sun dismiss them in the morning. In

this business the fashion is for every watchman to wear a garland, made in the fashion of a crown imperial, bedeck'd with flowers of various kinds, some natural, some artificial, bought and kept for that purpose, as also ribbans, jewels, and, for the better garnishing whereof, the townsmen use the day before to ransack the gardens of all the gentlemen within six or seven miles about Nottingham, besides what the town itself affords them, their greatest ambition being to outdo one another in the bravery of their garlands. This custom is now quite left off. It used to be kept in this town even so lately as the reign of King Charles I."

Plays appear to have been acted publicly about this time. We read in King's Vale Royal, p. 88, that in 1575, " Sir John Savage, maior, caused the Popish Plays of Chester to be played the Sunday, Munday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after Mid-summer Day, in contempt of an Inhibition, and the Primat's Letters from York, and from the Earl of Huntingdon." In the same work, p. 199, it is said : " Anno 1563, upon the Sunday after Midsummer Day, the History of Eneas and Queen Dido was play'd in the Roods Eye ; and were set out by one Willliam Croston, gent. and one Mr. Man, on which triumph there was made two forts and shipping on the water, besides many horsemen, well armed and appointed."

In Lyte's Translation of Dodoen's Herball, 1578, p. 39, we read : " Orpyne. The people of the countrey delight much to set it in pots and similes on Midsummer Even, or upon timber, slattes, or trenchers, daubed with clay, and so to set or hang it up in their houses, where as it remayneth greene: long season and groweth, if it be sometimes oversprinckled with water. It floureth most commonly in August." The common name for orpine plants was that of Midsummer Men. In one of the Tracts printed about 1800 at the Cheap Repository, was one entitled Tawney Rachel, or the Fortune-Teller, said to have been written by Hannah More. Among many other superstitious practices of poor Sally Evans, one of the heroines of the piece, we learn 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."[15] Spenser thus mentions orpine:

It is thus elegantly alluded to in the Cottage Girl, a poem "written on Midsummer Eve, 1786 :"

On the 22d of January, 1801, a small gold ring, weighing eleven pennyweights seventeen grains and a half, was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries by John Topham, Esq. It had been found by the Rev. Dr. Bacon, of Wakefield, in a ploughed field near Cawood, in Yorkshire, and had for a device two orpine plants joined by a true-love knot, with this motto above : " Ma fiance velt ;" i. e. My sweetheart wills, or is desirous. 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." From the form of the letters it appeared to have been a ring of the fifteenth century.

The orpine plant also occurs among the following love divinations on Midsummer Eve, preserved in the Connoisseur, No. 56:— " 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 he 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."

The same number of the Connoisseur fixes the time for watching in the church porch on Midsummer Eve : " I am sure 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." This superstition was more generally practised, and, I believe, is still retained in many parts on the Eve of St. Mark. (See p. 193.) Cleland, however, in his Institution of a young Nobleman," has a chapter entitled "A Remedie against Love," in which he thus exclaims: "Beware likewise of these fearful superstitions, as to watch upon St. John's evening, and the first Tuesdaye in the month of Marche, to conjure the moon, to lie upon your backe having your ears stopped with laurel leaves, and to fall asleepe, not thinking of God, and such like follies, all forged by the infernal Cyclops and Plutoe's servants."

Grose tells us that any person fasting on Midsummer Eve, and sitting in the church porch, will at midnight see the spirits of the persons of that parish who will die that year, come and knock at the church door, in the order and succession in which they will die. One of these watchers, there being several in company, fell into a sound sleep, so that he could not be waked. Whilst in this state, his ghost, or spirit, was seen by the rest of his companions knocking at the church door. (See Pandemonium, by R. B.) Aubrey, in his Remains of Gentilisme, mentions this custom on Midsummer Eve

nearly in the same words with Grose. It is also noticed in the poem of the Cottage Girl, already quoted :

On the subject of gathering the rose on Midsummer Eve, we have also the following lines :

Grose says: "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."

[Mother Bunch mentions "the old experiment of the Mid-summer shift." It is thus : " My daughters, let seven of you go together on a Midsummer's Eve, just at sun-set, into a silent grove, and gather every one of you a sprig of red sage, and return into a private room, with a stool in the middle : each one having a clean shift turned wrong side out-wards, hanging on a line across the room, and let every one lay their sprig of red sage in a clean basin of rose-water set on the stool ; which done, place yourselves in a row, and continue until twelve or one o'clock, saying nothing, be what it will you see ; for, after midnight, each one's sweetheart or husband that shall be, shall take each maid's sprig out of the rose-water, and sprinkle his love's shift ; and those who are so unfortunate as never to be married, their sprigs will not be moved, but in lieu of that, sobs and sighs will be heard. This has been often tried, and never failed of its effects." Another edition of Mother Bunch says : "On Midsummer Eve three or four of you must dip your shifts in fair water, then turn them wrong side outwards, and hang them on chairs before the fire, and lay some salt in another chair, and speak not a word. In is short time the likeness of him you are to

marry will come and turn your smocks, and drink to you ; but, if there be any of you will never marry, they will hear a bell, but not the rest."]

Lupton, in his Notable Things, b. i. 59, tells us: "It is certainly and constantly affirmed that on Midsummer Eve there is found, under the root of mugwort, a coal which saves or keeps them safe from the plague, carbuncle, lightning, the quartan ague, and from burning, that bear the same about them : and Mizaldus, the writer hereof, saith, that he doth hear that it is to be found the same day under the root of plantane, which I know to be of truth, for I have found them the same day under the root of plantane, which is especially and chiefly to be found at noon." In Natural and Artificial Conclusions, by Thomas Hill, 1650, we have : " the vertue of a rare cole, that is to be found but one houre in the day, and one day in the yeare. Diverse authors affirm concerning the verity and vertue of this tole ; viz. that it is onely to be found upon Midsummer Eve, just at noon, under every root of plantine and of mugwort ; the effects whereof are wonderful ; for whosoever weareth or beareth the same about with them, shall be freed from the plague, fever, ague, and sundry other diseases. And one author especially writeth, and constantly averreth, that he never knew any that used to carry of this marvellous cole about them, who ever were, to his knowledge, sick of the plague, or (indeed) complained of any other maladie."

" The last summer," says Aubrey, in his Miscellanies, 1696, p. 103, " on the day of St. John Baptist, [1694,] I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague house ; it was twelve a clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees, very busie, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was ; at last a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands. It was to be found that day and hour."

The following, however, in part an explanation of this singular search, occurs in the Practice of Paul Barbette, 1675, P 7 : " For the falling sicknesse some ascribe much to coals pulled out (on St. John Baptist's Eve) from under the roots of mugwort : but those authors are deceived, for they are not

coals, but old acid roots, consisting of much volatile salt, and are almost always to be found under mugwort : so that it is only a certain superstition that those old dead roots ought to be pulled up on the eve of St. John Baptist, about twelve at night."

The Status Scholae Etonesis, A.D. 1560, (MS. Addit. Brit. Mus. 4843,) says, " In bac Vigilia moris erat (quamdiu stetit) pueris, ornare lectos variis rerum variarum picturis, et carmina de vita rebusque gestis Joannis Baptistae et praecursoris componere: et pulchre exscripta affigere Clinopodiis lectorum, eruditis legends." And again,—" Mense Junii, in Festo Natalia D. Johannis post matutinas preces, dum consuetudo floruit accedebant omnes scholastici ad rogum extructum in orientali regione templi, ubi reverenter a symphoniacis cantatis tribus Antiphonis, et pueris in ordine stantibus venitur ad merendam."

In Torreblanca's Daemonologia, p. 150, I find the following superstition mentioned on the night of St. John, or of St. Paul : " Nostri saeculi puellae in nocte S. Joannis vel S. Pauli ad fenestras spectantes, primas praetereuntium votes captant, ut cui nubant conjectant." Our author is a Spaniard.

Scott, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, p. 144, tells us : Against witches " hang boughs (hallowed on Midsummer Day) at the stall door where the cattle stand."

Bishop Hall, in his Triumph of Rome, p. 58, says, that " St. John is implored for a benediction on wine upon his day."

A singular custom at Oxford, on the day of St. John Baptist, still remains to be mentioned. The notice of it, here copied, is from the Life of Bishop Horne, by the Rev. William Jones, (Works, vol. xii. p. 131.)— " A letter of July the 25th, 1755, informed me that Mr. Horne, according to an established custom at Magdalen College, in Oxford, had begun to preach before the University, on the day of Saint John the Baptist. For the preaching of this annual sermon, a permanent pulpit of stone is inserted into a corner of the first quadrangle ; and so long as the stone pulpit was in use, (of which I have been a witness,) the quadrangle was furnished round the sides with a large fence of green boughs, that the preaching might more nearly resemble that of John the Baptist in the wilderness; and a pleasant sight it was : but for many years the custom

has been discontinued, and the assembly have thought it safer to take shelter under the roof of the chapel."

[A chap-book in my possession gives the following method " to know what trade your husband will be : On Midsummer Eve take a small lump of lead (pewter is best), put it in your left stocking on going to bed, and place it under your pillow ; the next day being Midsummer Day, take a pail of water, and place it so as the sun shines exactly on it, and as the clock is striking twelve, pour in your lead or pewter melted and boiling hot; as soon as it is cold and settled, take it out, and you will find among the emblems of his trade, a ship is a sailor, tools a workman, trees a gardener, a ring a silversmith or jeweller, a book a parson or learned man, and so on."]

Lupton, in his Book of Notable Things, ed. 1660, p. 40, says : " Three nails made in the vigil of the Nativity of St. John Baptist, called Midsommer Eve, and driven in so deep that they cannot be seen in the place where the party cloth fall that hash the falling sickness, and naming the said par-ties name while it is doing, doth drive away the disease quite."

Cullinson, in his Somersetshire, iii. 586, says : " In the parishes of Congresbury and Puxton are two large pieces of common land, called East and West Dolemoors (from the Saxon dal, which signifies a share or portion), which are divided into single acres, each bearing a peculiar and different mark cut in the turf, such as a horn, four oxen and a mare, two oxen and a mare, a pole-axe, cross, dung-fork, oven, duck's nest, hand-reel, and hare's-tail. On the Saturday before Old Midsummer, several proprietors of estates in the parishes of Congresbury, Puxton, and Week St. Lawrence, or their tenants, assemble on the commons. A number of apples are previously prepared, marked in the same manner with the beforementioned acres, which are distributed by a young lad to each of the commoners from a bag or hat. At the close of the distibution each per-son repairs to his allotment, as his apple directs him, and takes possession for the ensuing year. An adjournment then takes place to the house of the overseer of Dolemoors (an officer annually elected from the tenants), where four acres, reserved for the purpose of paying expenses, are let by inch of candle, and the remainder of the day is spent in that sociability and hearty mirth so congenial to the soul of a Somersatsbire yeoman," [Midsummer Eve was formerly thought

So Olivia observes, speaking of Malvolio's seeming frenzy, that it " is a very Midsummer madness ;" and Steevens thinks that as " this time was anciently thought productive of mental vagaries, to that circumstance the Midsummer Night's Dream might have owed its title." Heywood seems to allude to a similar belief, when he says[17] ---

[1] " Rotam quoque hoc die in quibusdam locis volvunt, ad significandum quod sol altissimum tune locum in coelo occupet, et descendere incipiat in zodiaco." Among the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum, 2345, Art. 100, is an account of the rites of St. John Baptist's Eve, in which the wheel is also mentioned. The writer is speaking " de Tripudiis quae in Vigilia B. Johannis, fieri solent, quorum tria genera." " In Vigilia enim beati Johannis," the author adds, " colligunt pueri in quihusdan regionibus ossa et quaedam alia immunda, et in simul cremant, et exinde producitur fumus in acre. Cremant etiam Brandas (seu Fasces) et circuiunt arva cum Brandis. Tertiam, de Rota quam factual volvi. Quod cum immunda cremant, hoc habent ex Gentilibus." The catalogue describes this curious manuscript thus, "Codex membranaceus in 4to. cujus nunc plura desiderantur folia : quo tarnen continebantur diversa cujusdam monachi, uti videtur, Winchelcumbensis, opuscula."

[2] These fires are supposed to have been called bonefires because they were generally made of bones. There is a passage in Stow, however, wherein he speaks of men finding wood or labour towards them, which seems to oppose the opinion. Dr. Hickes also gives a very different etymon. He defines a bonefire to be a festive or triumphant fire. In the Islandic language, he says, Baal signifies a burning. In the Anglo-Saxo , Bael-Fyr, by a change of letters of the same organ is made Baen-fy whence our bone-fire. In the Tinmouth MS. cited in the History of Newcastle, " Boon-er, " and " Boen-Harow," occur for ploughing and harrowing gratis, or by gift. There is a passage also, much to our purpose, in Aston's Translation of Aubanus, p. 282,-- " Common fires (or, as we call them here in England, bone-fires)." I am therefore strongly inclined to think that bone-fire means a contribution-fire, that is, a fire to which every one in the neighbourhood contributes a certain portion of materials. The contributed ploughing days in Northumberland are called bone-dargs. " Bon-fire," says Lye (apud Junii Etymolog.), " not a fire made of bones, but a boon-fire, a fire made of materials obtained by begging. Boon, bone, bene, vet. Angl. petilio, preces." Fuller, in p. 25 of his Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, 1658, says he has met with "two etymologies of bone-fires. Some deduce it from fires made of bones, relating into the burning of martyrs, first fashionable in England in the reign of King Henry the Fourth ; but others derive the word (more truly in my mind) from boon, that is good, and fires.'

[3] Levinus Lemnius, in his treatise de Occultis Nature; Miraculis, lib. iii, cap. S, has the following: " Natalis dies Joannis Baptista—non solum Judaeis ac Christianis, sed Mauris etiam ac Barbaris, quique a nostra religione alieni ac Mahumeto addicti aunt, celebris est et sacro-sanctus, tametsi nonnulli hujus noctem superstitioso quodam cultu congestis lignorum acervis, accensisque Ignibus, ut Corybantes ac Cybeles cultores, strepitu ac furiosis clamoribus transigant, quin et impuberes congestis collisisque ignitis carbonibus bombes ac crepitacula excutiunt." He cites Olaus Magnus as describing how the Goths kept this night. Q1 Omnis enim generis sexusque homines turmatim in publicum concurrunt, extructisque luculentis ignibus atque accensis facibus, chords, tripudiisque se exercent."

[4] The Times Newspaper of June 29, 1833, gives an account of a riot at Cork, in consequence of some soldiers refusing to subscribe money towards the fires which were to be lighted on St. John's Eve.

[5] In the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill, in the 17 and 19 Edward IV. Palmer and Clerk, Churchwardens, I find the following entry : " For birch at Midsummer, viiijd." As also, among the annual church disbursements, the subsequent : " Birch, Midsummer Eve, iiijd. Ibid., 1486 : " Item, for birch bowes, agenst Midsummer." Coles, in his Adam in Eden, speaking of the birch-tree, say : " I remember once, as I rid through Little Brickhill, in Buckinghamshire, which is a town standing upon the London-road, between Dunstable and Stoney Stratford, every signe-post in the towne almost was bedecked with green birch." This had been done, no doubt, on account of Midsummer Eve. Coles quaintly observes, among the civil uses of the birch-tree, " the punishment of children, both at home and at school ; for it hath an admirable influence on them when they are out of order, and therefore some call it Makepeace." In the Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Martin Outwich (see Nichols's Illustrations, p. 273), we have : "1524. Payde for byrche and bromes at Midsomr, ijd." " 1525. Payde for byrch and bromes at Mydsomr, iijd." In Dekker's Wonderful Yeare, 1603, we read, " Olive trees (which grow no where but in the Garden of Peace) stood (as common as beech does at Midsomer) at every man's doore."

[6] Pennant's MS. informs us, that in Wales " they have the custom of sticking St. John's wort over the doors on the Eve' of St. John Baptist." The following curious extract from Bishop Pocock's Repressour, c. 6, is given by Lewis, in his Life of that prelate, p. 70 : " Whanne men of the cuntree uplond bringing into Londoun, on Mydsomer Eve, braunchis of trees from Bischopis-wode, and flouris fro the feld, and bitaken tho to citessins of Londoun, for to therwith araie her housis, that thei make there with her houses gay, into remembraunce of Seint Johan Baptist, and o this, that it was prophecied of him that many schulden joie in his burthe.

[7] "Flammam transiliendi mos videtur etiam priscis Graeciae temporibus usurpatus fuisse, deque eo versus Sophoclis in Antigone quosdam intelligendos putant : Cum enim Rex Cretin Polynicis cadaver, humare prohibuisset, Antigone autem ipsius soror illud humo contexisset, custodes, ut mortis poenam a Rege, constitutam vitarent, dicebant se paratos esse ferrum candens manibus contrectare et per pyram incedere. Hotom. Disput. de Feudis. cap. xliv. Hic mos Gallis, Germanis et post Christianismum remansit etiam pontificibus: et adulteria uxorum ferro candenten probant Germani. AEmil. lib. iv. &c.— Et Vascones accensis ignibus in urbium vicis vidi per medios saltare ad Festum Joanni sacrum in aestate; et qui funus antiquitus prosequuti fuerant, ad proprios Lares reversi, aqua aspersi, ignem supergradiebantur, hoc se piaculo ex funere expiari arbitrati," &c. Papatus, p. 61.

[8] See also in another passage : " Majores vero natu ad Festum D. Johannis sacrum accensis vespere in platea ignibus, flammam transiliunt stramineam Mares et Foeminae, pueri pupaeque, ac fieri vidi in Galliis inter Cadureos ad oppidulum Puy la Rocque." p. 72.

[9] The following extracts from Moresin illustrate the above observations in the ancient Calendar, as well as Stow's account : "Apud nostros quoque proavos, inolevit longa annorum serie persuasio Artemisiam in Festis divo Joanni Baptists sacris ante domos suspensam, item alios frutices et plantas atque etiam candelas, facesque designatis quibusdam diebus celebrioribus aqua lustrali rigatas, &c. contra tempestates, fulmina, tonitrua, et adversus Diaboli potestatem, &c. quosdam incendere ipso die Johannis Baptists fasciculum lustratarum herbarum contra tonitrua, fulmina," &c. Papatus, p. 28. " Torah, seu Toralium antiquo tempore dicebatur florum et herbarum suaveolentium manipulus, seu plures in restim colligati, qui suspendeban:ur ante Thalamorum et Cubilium fores : et in papatu ad S. loannis .mutuato more suspendunt ad Ostia et Januas hujus modi serta et restes at saspius ad aras." Ibid. p. 171.

[10] [" Gather fearne-seed on Midsomer Eve, and weare it about the continually. Also on Midsomer Day take the herb milfoile roote before sun-rising and before you take it out of the ground say these words following, &c., and gather the fernseed on Midsomer Eve betweene 11 and 12 at noone and att night." MS. temp. Eliz.]

[11] " Persuasum denique est vulgo, si circa diem S. Joannis pluat, officere id avellanis. Causa fortasse est ipsarum teneritudo, humoris impatiens." Hospin. de Orig. Festor. Christian. fol. 113.

[12] Hutchinson, in his History of Cumberland, i. 177, speaking of the parish of Cumwhitton, says : " They hold the wake on the Eve of St. John, with lighting fires, dancing, &c. The old Bel-teing."

[13] The boundary of each tin-mine in Cornwall is marked by a long pole, with a bush at the top of it. These on St. John's Day are crowned with lowers.

[14] Completely ; in every particular. See an account of the phrase in Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaisms, p. 103.

[15] [Mr. Soane, in his New Curiosities of Literature, i. 210, quotes an old work for this curious custom.]

[16] The sowing of hemp-seed, as will hereafter be shown, was also used on Allhallow Even.

[17] Halliwell's Introduction to a Midsummer Night's Dream, p. 3.

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