then go straightway and bathe in the sea.' In Cos the lads and lasses dance round the bonfires on St. John's Eve. Each of the lads binds a black stone on his head, signifying that he wishes to become as strong as the stone. Also they make the sign of the cross on their feet and legs and jump over the fire. On Midsummer Eve the Greeks of Macedonia light fires after supper in front of their gates. The garlands, now faded, which were hung over the doors on May Day, are taken down and cast into the flames, after which the young folk leap over the blaze, fully persuaded that St. John's fire will not burn them." Even the Mohammedans of Algeria and Morocco are reported to have kindled great midsummer bonfires of straw, into which they kept throwing incense and spices the whole night, invoking the divine blessing on their fruit-trecs. From the Old World the midsummer fires have been carried across the Atlantic to America. In Brazil people jump over the fires of St. John, and at this season they can take hot coals in their mouths without burning themselves." In Bolivia on the Eve of St. John it is usual to see bonfires lighted on the hills and even in the streets of the capital La Paz. The writer who reports the custom adds that he cannot say whether it was introduced by the Spaniards, or was prevalent before the conquest." It remains to show that the burning of effigies of human beings in the midsummer fires was not uncommon. At Rottenburg in Wurtemberg, down to the beginning of the present century, a ceremony was observed on Midsummer Day which was called "beheading the angel-man." A stump was driven into the ground, wrapt with straw, and fashioned into the rude likeness of a human figure, with arms, head, and face. This was the angel-man; round about him wood was piled up. The boys, armed with swords, assembled in crowds, covered the figure completely over with flowers, and eagerly awaited the signal. When the pile of wood was fired and the angel-man burst into a blaze, the word was given and all the boys fell upon him with their swords and hewed the burning figure in pieces. Then they leaped backwards and forwards over the fire.1 In some parts of the Tyrol a straw-man is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and then burned. He is called the Lotter, which has been corrupted into Luther.? 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. At Grätz on 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. In some parts of Russia a figure of Kupalo is burned or thrown into a stream on St. John's Night. The Russian custom of carrying a straw effigy of Kupalo over the midsummer bonfire has been already described." The best general explanation of these European firefestivals seems to be the one given by Mannhardt, namely, that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended to ensure a proper supply of sunshine for men, animals, and plants. We have seen that savages resort to charms for making sunshine, and it is no wonder that primitive man in Europe has done the same. Indeed, when we consider the cold and cloudy climate of Europe during a great part of the year, we shall find it natural that sun-charms should have played a much more prominent part among the superstitious practices of European peoples than among those of savages who live nearer the equator. This view of the festivals is supported by various arguments drawn partly from the 1 Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, ii. 100 sq.; B. K. p. 513 sq. 2 Zingerle, Sitten, etc., des Tiroler Volkes, p. 159, § 1353. cp. § 1355; B.K. p. 513. 3 Madame Clément, Histoire des fêtes civiles et religieuses, etc., du Département du Nord (Cambrai, 1836), p. 364; Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen 6 Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 240. Above, vol. ii. p. 105. 7 Above, vol. i. p. 115 sqq. rites themselves, partly from the influence which they are believed to exert upon the weather and on vegetation. For example, the custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hillside, which is often observed at these times, seems a very natural imitation of the sun's course in the sky, and the imitation is especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun's annual declension begins. Not less graphic is the mimicry of his apparent revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole." The custom of throwing blazing discs, shaped like suns, into the air is probably also a picce of imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic force is supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy; by imitating the desired result you actually produce it; by counterfeiting the sun's progress through the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality and despatch. The name "fire of heaven," by which the midsummer fire is sometimes popularly known," clearly indicates a consciousness of the connection between the earthly and the heavenly flame. Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally kindled on these occasions favours the view that it was intended to be a mock-sun. For, as various scholars have seen, it is highly probable that originally at these festivals fire was universally obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood. We have seen that this is still the case in some places both at the Easter and midsummer fires, and that it is expressly stated to have been formerly the case at the Beltane fires. But what makes it almost certain that this was once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is the analogy of the need-fires. Need-fires are kindled, not at fixed periods, but on occasions of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of a murrain, and the cattle are driven through the need-fire, just as they are sometimes driven through the midsummer fires.1 Now, the need-fire has almost always been produced by the friction of wood and sometimes by the revolution of a wheel; in Mull, for example, it was made by turning an oaken wheel over nine oaken spindles from east to west, that is, in the direction of the sun." It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel employed to produce the need-fire represents the sun;3 and if the spring and midsummer fires were originally pro 1 On the need-fires, see Grimm, D.M. i. 501 sqq.; Wolf, op. cit. i. 116 sq., ii. 378 sqq.; Kuhn, op. cit. P. 41 sqq.; B.K. p. 518 sqq.; Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore, p. 48 sqq.; Elton, Origins of English History, p. 293 sq.; Jahn, Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht, p. 26 sqq. 2 Grimm, D.M. i. 506. The fire was made on the top of Carnmoor Hill, every common fire in every house within sight of the hill having been previously extinguished. In 1767 a delay in the production of the need-fire was attributed to the obstinacy of one householder who would not let his fires be put out. The rule that all fires in the neighbourhood must be extinguished while the need-fire is being made is common to Scotland and Germany. See Martin, "Description of the Western Islands of Scotland," in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, iii. 611; Grimm, D..M.1 i. 502, 503, 504, 507; Colshorn, Sagen und Marchen (Hanover, 1854), p. 234 sq.; Pröhle, Harzbilder (Leipsic, 1855), p. 74 sq. In Pröhle's account we read how in a village near Quedlinburg the kindling of the need-fire was impeded by a night-light burning in the parsonage; how the people knocked at the window and begged earnestly, but in vain, that the light might be extinguished; and how their hope of producing the need-fire revived towards morning when the night-light went out of itself. According to one account, in the Highlands of Scotland the rule that all common fires must be previ ously extinguished applied only to the houses situated between the two nearest running streams (Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore, p. 53 sq.). In Bulgaria also every fire in the village must be extinguished before the need-fire is kindled; even smoking is forbidden. Two naked men produce the fire by rubbing dry branches together in the forest; and with the flame thus elicited they light two fires, one on each side of a crossroad haunted by wolves. The cattle are then driven between the two fires, from which glowing embers are afterwards taken to rekindle the cold hearths in the houses (A. Strausz, Die Bulgaren, p. 198). In Caithness the men who kindled the need-fire had previously to divest themselves of all metal (Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. "Neid-fire," vol. iii. p. 349 sq., ed. Longmuir and Donaldson). In some of the Hebrides the men who made the need-fire had to be eighty-one in number and all married; they worked at rubbing the two planks together by relays of nine men at a time (Martin, .c.). Sometimes the fire is produced, not by the friction of two pieces of wood, but by the friction of a rope on wood. In the Halberstadt district the rope had to be pulled by two chaste boys (Grimm, D... i. 504). It is reported, contrary to the usual custom, that near Wolfenbüttel the need-tire had to be struck by the smith from the cold anvil (R. Andree, Braunschweiger Volkskunde, p. 314). In England the need-fire is said to have been kindled at Birtley within the last half-century (The Denham Tracts, ii. 342; compare ibid. pp. 50, 365 sq.). This is the view of Grimm, Wolf, Kuhn, Kelly, and Mannhardt. duced in the same way, it would be a confirmation of the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn has pointed out,' some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was originally thus produced. We have seen that many Hungarian swineherds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs through the fire thus made.2 At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the "fire of heaven," as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the fifteenth of June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of the mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms directed heavenward.3 Here the fixing of a wheel on a pole and igniting it suggests that originally the fire was produced, as in the case of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on which the ceremony takes place (the fifteenth of June) is near midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is or used to be actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so produced is used to light a bonfire. Once more, the influence which these bonfires are supposed to exert on the weather and on vegetation, goes to show that they are sun-charms, since the effects ascribed to them are identical with those of sunshine. Thus, we have seen that in the Vosges Mountains the people believe that the midsummer fires help to preserve the fruits of the carth and ensure good crops. In Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the direction in which the flames of the May Day bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, 3 Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 240, § 443. 1 Herabkunft des Feuers,” p. 47. See above, p. 277. |