After addressing the throng in a sermon,
to which they pay little heed, the parish priest sprinkles the pyre with
holy water, and taking a lighted torch from the hand of an assistant
sets fire to the pile. The enormous blaze, flaring up against the dark
sky of the summer night, is seen for many miles around, particularly
from the hill of Laon. When it has died down into a huge heap of glowing
embers and grey ashes, every one carries home a charred stick or some
cinders; and the fire-brigade, playing their hose on what remains,
extinguishes the smouldering fire. The people preserve the charred
sticks and cinders throughout the year, believing that these relics of
St John's bonfire have power to guard them from lightning and from
contagious diseases.[465] At Chateau-Thierry, a town of the department
of Aisne, between Paris and Reims, the custom of lighting bonfires and
dancing round them at the midsummer festival of St. John lasted down to
about 1850; the fires were kindled especially when June had been rainy,
and the people thought that the lighting of the bonfires would cause the
rain to cease.[466]
[The Midsummer fires in Beauce and Perche; the fires as a protection
against witchcraft.]
In Beauce and Perche, two neighbouring districts of France to the
south-west of Paris, the midsummer bonfires have nearly or wholly
disappeared, but formerly they were commonly kindled and went by the
name of the "fires of St.
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