sh fire," and as St. Margaret was the Juno Lucina of puerperal
women.

SECT. 3--CAUSES

The connection which John the Baptist had with the Dancing Mania of the
fourteenth century was of a totally different character. He was
originally far from being a protecting saint to those who were attacked,
or one who would be likely to give them relief from a malady considered
as the work of the devil. On the contrary, the manner in which he was
worshipped afforded an important and very evident cause for its
development. From the remotest period, perhaps even so far back as the
fourth century, St. John's day was solemnised with all sorts of strange
and rude customs, of which the originally mystical meaning was variously
disfigured among different nations by superadded relics of heathenism.
Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's day an ancient
heathen usage, the kindling of the "Nodfyr," which was forbidden them by
St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present day that people
and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are
protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a
kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian dances, which have originated in
similar causes among all the rude nations of the earth, and the wild
extravagancies of a heated imagination, were the constant accompaniments
of this half-heathen, half-Christian festival. At the period of which we
are treating, however, the Germans were not the only people who gave way
to the ebullitions of fanaticism in keeping the festival of St. John the
Baptist. Similar customs were also to be found among the nations of
Southern Europe and of Asia, and it is more than probable that the Greeks
transferred to the festival of John the Baptist, who is also held in high
esteem among the Mahomedans, a part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an
absurdity of a kind which is but too frequently met with in human
affairs. How far a remembrance of the history of St. John's death may
have had an influence on this occasion, we would leave learned
theologians to decide. It is only of importance here to add that in
Abyssinia, a country entirely separated from Europe, where Christianity
has maintained itself in its primeval simplicity against Mahomedanism,
John is to this day worshipped, as protecting saint of those who are
attacked with the dancing malady. In these fragments of the dominion of
mysticism and superstition