"
In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house
collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their
number from head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by
a rope through the whole village. At Moosheim, in Wurtemberg, the
festival of St. John's Fire usually lasted for fourteen days, ending
on the second Sunday after Midsummer Day. On this last day the
bonfire was left in charge of the children, while the older people
retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves and
twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire, scattered it, and trod
it out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.
But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices
offered on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have
seen, are those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at
the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a
Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost
completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved
their old heathenism better perhaps than any other people in the
West of Europe.
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