Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, was celebrated by
the same personages with the same noisy gaiety. One of the ceremonies
consisted in parading, to the sound of musketry, an enormous loaf of
consecrated bread, which, rising in tiers, was surmounted by a pyramid
of verdure adorned with ribbons. After that the holy handbells,
deposited on the step of the altar, were entrusted as insignia of office
to the man who was to be the Green Wolf next year.[463]
[The Midsummer fires in Picardy.]
In the canton of Breteuil in Picardy (department of Oise) the priest
used to kindle the midsummer bonfire, and the people marched thrice
round it in procession. Some of them took ashes of the fire home with
them to protect the houses against lightning.[464] The custom is, or was
down to recent years, similar at Vorges, near Laon. An enormous pyre,
some fifty or sixty feet high, supported in the middle by a tall pole,
is constructed every year on the twenty-third of June, the Eve of St.
John. It stands at one end of the village, and all the inhabitants
contribute fuel to it: a cart goes round the village in the morning, by
order of the mayor, collecting combustibles from house to house: no one
would dream of refusing to comply with the customary obligation. In the
evening, after a service in honour of St. John has been performed in the
church, the clergy, the mayor, the municipal authorities, the rural
police, and the fire-brigade march in procession to the bonfire,
accompanied by the inhabitants and a crowd of idlers drawn by curiosity
from the neighbouring villages.
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