" For this
ceremony an open space was chosen, sometimes in the middle of the town.
Here a stake was thrust into the ground and straw wrapt about it, so as
to make a rude effigy of human form with arms, head, and face. Every boy
brought a handful of nosegays and fastened them to the straw-man, who
was thus enveloped in flowers. Fuel was heaped about the stake and set
on fire. When the Angel-man, as the straw-effigy was called, blazed up,
all the boys of the neighbourhood, who had gathered expectantly around,
fell upon him with their wooden swords and hewed him to pieces. As soon
as he had vanished in smoke and flame, the lads leaped backward and
forward over the glowing embers, and later in the evening they feasted
on the proceeds of their collection.[408] Here the Angel-man burnt in
the fire appears to be identified with Martin Luther, to whom, as we
have seen, allusion was made during the house-to-house visitation. The
identification was probably modern, for we may assume that the custom of
burning an effigy in the Midsummer bonfire is far older than the time of
Luther.
[The Midsummer fires in Baden; omens drawn from leaps over the fires;
burning discs thrown into the air; Midsummer fires in Alsace, Lorraine,
the Eifel, the Harz districts and Thuringia; burning barrel swung round
a pole.]
In Baden the children used to collect fuel from house to house for the
Midsummer bonfire on St. John's Day; and lads and lasses leaped over the
fire in couples.
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