in Picardy.]

In the canton of Breteuil in Picardy (department of Oise) the priest
used to kindle the midsummer bonfire, and the people marched thrice
round it in procession. Some of them took ashes of the fire home with
them to protect the houses against lightning.[464] The custom is, or was
down to recent years, similar at Vorges, near Laon. An enormous pyre,
some fifty or sixty feet high, supported in the middle by a tall pole,
is constructed every year on the twenty-third of June, the Eve of St.
John. It stands at one end of the village, and all the inhabitants
contribute fuel to it: a cart goes round the village in the morning, by
order of the mayor, collecting combustibles from house to house: no one
would dream of refusing to comply with the customary obligation. In the
evening, after a service in honour of St. John has been performed in the
church, the clergy, the mayor, the municipal authorities, the rural
police, and the fire-brigade march in procession to the bonfire,
accompanied by the inhabitants and a crowd of idlers drawn by curiosity
from the neighbouring villages. After addressing the throng in a sermon,
to which they pay little heed, the parish priest sprinkles the pyre with
holy water, and taking a lighted torch from the hand of an assistant
sets fire to the pile. The enormous blaze, flaring up against the dark
sky of the summer night, is seen for many miles around, particularly
from the hill of Laon. When it has died down into a huge heap of glowing
embers and grey ashes, every one carries home a charred stick or some
cinders; and the fire-brigade, playing their hose on what remains,
extinguishes the smouldering fire. The people preserve the charred
sticks and cinders throughout the year, believing that these relics of
St John's bonfire have power to guard them from lightning and from
contagious diseases.[465] At Chateau-Thierry, a town of the department
of Aisne, between Paris and Reims, the custom of lighting bonfires and
dancing round them at the midsummer festival of St. John lasted down to
about 1850; the fires were kindled especially when June had been rainy,
and the people thought that the lighting of the bonfires would cause the
rain to cease.[466]

[The Midsummer fires in Beauce and Perche; the fires as a protection
against witchcraft.]

In Beauce and Perche, two neighbouring districts of France to the
south-west of Paris, the midsummer bonfires have nearly or wholly
disappeared, but for