Whoever jumps thrice across the fire will
not suffer from fever within the year. Cart-wheels are often smeared
with pitch, ignited, and sent rolling and blazing down the
hillsides.
All over Bohemia bonfires still burn on Midsummer Eve. In the
afternoon boys go about with handcarts from house to house
collecting fuel and threatening with evil consequences the
curmudgeons who refuse them a dole. Sometimes the young men fell a
tall straight fir in the woods and set it up on a height, where the
girls deck it with nosegays, wreaths of leaves, and red ribbons.
Then brushwood is piled about it, and at nightfall the whole is set
on fire. While the flames break out, the young men climb the tree
and fetch down the wreaths which the girls had placed on it. After
that lads and lasses stand on opposite sides of the fire and look at
one another through the wreaths to see whether they will be true to
each other and marry within the year. Also the girls throw the
wreaths across the flames to the men, and woe to the awkward swain
who fails to catch the wreath thrown him by his sweetheart.
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