People leap
across the fires to protect themselves against fever, and in eastern
Flanders women perform similar leaps for the purpose of ensuring an easy
delivery. At Termonde young people go from door to door collecting fuel
for the fires and reciting verses, in which they beg the inmates to give
them "wood of St. John" and to keep some wood for St. Peter's Day (the
twenty-ninth of June); for in Belgium the Eve of St. Peter's Day is
celebrated by bonfires and dances exactly like those which commemorate
St. John's Eve. The ashes of the St. John's fires are deemed by Belgian
peasants an excellent remedy for consumption, if you take a spoonful or
two of them, moistened with water, day by day. People also burn vervain
in the fires, and they say that in the ashes of the plant you may find,
if you look for it, the "Fool's Stone."[491] In many parts of Brabant
St. Peter's bonfire used to be much larger than that of his rival St.
John. When it had burned out, both sexes engaged in a game of ball, and
the winner became the King of Summer or of the Ball and had the right to
choose his Queen. Sometimes the winner was a woman, and it was then her
privilege to select her royal mate. This pastime was well known at
Louvain and it continued to be practised at Grammont and Mespelaer down
to the second half of the nineteenth century. At Mespelaer, which is a
village near Termonde, a huge pile of eglantine, reeds, and straw was
collected in a marshy meadow for the bonfire; and next evening after
vespers the young folk who had lit it assembled at the "Good Life"
tavern to play the game.
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