ies burnt in the
fires; burning wheels rolled down hill.]

In Switzerland on Midsummer Eve fires are, or used to be, kindled on
high places in the cantons of Bern, Neuchatel, Valais, and Geneva.[422]
In Austria the midsummer customs and superstitions resemble those of
Germany. Thus in some parts of the Tyrol bonfires are kindled and
burning discs hurled into the air.[423] In the lower valley of the Inn a
taterdemalian effigy is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and
then burned. He is called the _Lotter_, which has been corrupted into
Luther. At Ambras, one of the villages where Martin Luther is thus
burned in effigy, they say that if you go through the village between
eleven and twelve on St. John's Night and wash yourself in three wells,
you will see all who are to die in the following year.[424] At Gratz on
St. John's Eve (the twenty-third of June) the common people used to make
a puppet called the _Tatermann_, which they dragged to the bleaching
ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire.[425] At
Reutte, in the Tyrol, people believed that the flax would grow as high
as they leaped over the midsummer bonfire, and they took pieces of
charred wood from the fire and stuck them in their flax-fields the same
night, leaving them there till the flax harvest had been got in.[426] In
Lower Austria fires are lit in the fields, commonly in front of a cross,
and the people dance and sing round them and throw flowers into the
flames. Before each handful of flowers is tossed into the fire, a set
speech is made; then the dance is resumed and the dancers sing in chorus
the last words of the speech. At evening bonfires are kindled on the
heights, and the boys caper round them, brandishing lighted torches
drenched in pitch. Whoever jumps thrice across the fire will not suffer
from fever within the year. Cart-wheels are often smeared with pitch,
ignited, and sent rolling and blazing down the hillsides.[427]

[Midsummer fires in Bohemia; wreaths thrown across the fire; uses made
of the singed wreaths; burning wheels rolled down hill; embers of the
fire stuck in fields, gardens, and houses as a talisman against
lightning and conflagration; use of mugwort; cattle protected against
witchcraft.]

All over Bohemia bonfires still burn on Midsummer Eve. In the afternoon
boys go about with handcarts from house to house collecting fuel, such
as sticks, brushwood, old besoms, and so forth. They make their request
at each h