Men,
women, and children assembled round the fires, and the young people
jumped over them. Children were brought by their parents or elder
brothers into contact with the flames in the belief that this would save
them from fever. Older people girded themselves with stalks of rye taken
from a neighbouring field, because they fancied that by so doing they
would not grow weary in reaping the corn at harvest.[476]
[The Midsummer fires in Poitou.]
Bonfires were lit in almost all the hamlets of Poitou on the Eve of St.
John. People marched round them thrice, carrying a branch of walnut in
their hand. Shepherdesses and children passed sprigs of mullein
(_verbascum_) and nuts across the flames; the nuts were supposed to cure
toothache, and the mullein to protect the cattle from sickness and
sorcery. When the fire died down people took some of the ashes home with
them, either to keep them in the house as a preservative against thunder
or to scatter them on the fields for the purpose of destroying
corn-cockles and darnel. Stones were also placed round the fire, and it
was believed that the first to lift one of these stones next morning
would find under it the hair of St. John.[477] In Poitou also it used to
be customary on the Eve of St. John to trundle a blazing wheel wrapt in
straw over the fields to fertilize them.[478] This last custom is said
to be now extinct,[479] but it is still usual, or was so down to recent
years, in Poitou to kindle fires on this day at cross-roads or on the
heights.
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