John's Eve. Some people say
that the fires of St. Peter, like those of St. John, are lighted in
order to drive away dragons. In French Flanders down to 1789 a straw
figure representing a man was always burned in the midsummer
bonfire, and the figure of a woman was burned on St. Peter's Day,
the twenty-ninth of June. In Belgium people jump over the midsummer
bonfires as a preventive of colic, and they keep the ashes at home
to hinder fire from breaking out.
The custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has been observed in
many parts of our own country, and as usual people danced round and
leaped over them. In Wales three or nine different kinds of wood and
charred faggots carefully preserved from the last midsummer were
deemed necessary to build the bonfire, which was generally done on
rising ground. In the Vale of Glamorgan a cart-wheel swathed in
straw used to be ignited and sent rolling down the hill. If it kept
alight all the way down and blazed for a long time, an abundant
harvest was expected. On Midsummer Eve people in the Isle of Man
were wont to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the
smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and
carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.
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