Such a moment could not
but be regarded with anxiety by primitive man so soon as he began to
observe and ponder the courses of the great lights across the
celestial vault; and having still to learn his own powerlessness in
face of the vast cyclic changes of nature, he may have fancied that
he could help the sun in his seeming decline--could prop his failing
steps and rekindle the sinking flame of the red lamp in his feeble
hand. In some such thoughts as these the midsummer festivals of our
European peasantry may perhaps have taken their rise. Whatever their
origin, they have prevailed all over this quarter of the globe, from
Ireland on the west to Russia on the east, and from Norway and
Sweden on the north to Spain and Greece on the south. According to a
mediaeval writer, the three great features of the midsummer
celebration were the bonfires, the procession with torches round the
fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel. He tells us that boys
burned bones and filth of various kinds to make a foul smoke, and
that the smoke drove away certain noxious dragons which at this
time, excited by the summer heat, copulated in the air and poisoned
the wells and rivers by dropping their seed into them; and he
explains the custom of trundling a wheel to mean that the sun,
having now reached the highest point in the ecliptic, begins
thenceforward to descend.
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