In the lower valley of the Inn a
tatterdemalion effigy is carted about the village on Midsummer Day
and then burned. He is called the _Lotter,_ which has been corrupted
into Luther. At Ambras, one of the villages where Martin Luther is
thus burned in effigy, they say that if you go through the village
between eleven and twelve on St. John's Night and wash yourself in
three wells, you will see all who are to die in the following year.
At Gratz on St. John's Eve (the twenty-third of June) the common
people used to make a puppet called the _Tatermann,_ which they
dragged to the bleaching ground, and pelted with burning besoms till
it took fire. At Reutte, in the Tyrol, people believed that the flax
would grow as high as they leaped over the midsummer bonfire, and
they took pieces of charred wood from the fire and stuck them in
their flax-fields the same night, leaving them there till the flax
harvest had been got in. In Lower Austria bonfires are kindled on
the heights, and the boys caper round them, brandishing lighted
torches drenched in pitch.
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