azing, crackling torches about the fruit-trees,
would be eminently appropriate. For who could ripen the fruit so well as
the sun-god? and what better process could be devised to draw the
blossoms from the bare boughs than the application to them of that
genial warmth which is ultimately derived from the solar beams? Thus the
fire-festival of the first Sunday in Lent, as it is observed in
Auvergne, may be interpreted very naturally and simply as a religious or
rather perhaps magical ceremony designed to procure a due supply of the
sun's heat for plants and animals. At the same time we should remember
that the employment of fire in this and kindred ceremonies may have been
designed originally, not so much to stimulate growth and reproduction,
as to burn and destroy all agencies, whether in the shape of vermin,
witches, or what not, which threatened or were supposed to threaten the
growth of the crops and the multiplication of animals. It is often
difficult to decide between these two different interpretations of the
use of fire in agricultural rites. In any case the fire-festival of
Auvergne on the first Sunday in Lent may date from Druidical times.

[French custom of carrying lighted torches (_brandons_) about the
orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent.]

The custom of carrying lighted torches of straw (_brandons_) about the
orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent seems
to have been common in France, whether it was accompanied with the
practice of kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province of Picardy
"on the first Sunday of Lent people carried torches through the fields,
exorcising the field-mice, the darnel, and the smut. They imagined that
they did much good to the gardens and caused the onions to grow large.
Children ran about the fields, torch in hand, to make the land more
fertile. All that was done habitually in Picardy, and the ceremony of
the torches is not entirely forgotten, especially in the villages on
both sides the Somme as far as Saint-Valery."[279] "A very agreeable
spectacle, said the curate of l'Etoile, is to survey from the portal of
the church, situated almost on the top of the mountain, the vast plains
of Vimeux all illuminated by these wandering fires. The same pastime is
observed at Poix, at Conty, and in all the villages round about."[280]
Again, in the district of Beauce a festival of torches (_brandons_ or
_brandelons_) used to be held bot