round them, and sprang over the dying
flames.[472] In Bresse bonfires used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve (the
twenty-third of June) and the people danced about them in a circle.
Devout persons, particularly old women, circumambulated the fires
fourteen times, telling their beads and mumbling seven _Paters_ and
seven _Aves_ in the hope that thereby they would feel no pains in their
backs when they stooped over the sickle in the harvest field.[473] In
Berry, a district of Central France, the midsummer fire was lit on the
Eve of St. John and went by the name of the _jonee, joannee_, or
_jouannee_. Every family according to its means contributed faggots,
which were piled round a pole on the highest ground in the
neighbourhood. In the hamlets the office of kindling the fire devolved
on the oldest man, but in the towns it was the priest or the mayor who
discharged the duty. Here, as in Brittany, people supposed that a girl
who had danced round nine of the midsummer bonfires would marry within
the year. To leap several times over the fire was regarded as a sort of
purification which kept off sickness and brought good luck to the
leaper. Hence the nimble youth bounded through the smoke and flames, and
when the fire had somewhat abated parents jumped across it with their
children in their arms in order that the little ones might also partake
of its beneficent influence. Embers from the extinct bonfire were taken
home, and after being dipped in holy water were kept as a talisman
against all kinds of misfortune, but especially against lightning.[474]
The same virtue was ascribed to the ashes and charred sticks of the
midsummer bonfire in Perigord, where everybody contributed his share of
fuel to the pile and the whole was crowned with flowers, especially with
roses and lilies.[475] On the borders of the departments of Creuse and
Correze, in Central France, the fires of St. John used to be lit on the
Eve of the saint's day (the twenty-third of June); the custom seems to
have survived till towards the end of the nineteenth century. Men,
women, and children assembled round the fires, and the young people
jumped over them. Children were brought by their parents or elder
brothers into contact with the flames in the belief that this would save
them from fever. Older people girded themselves with stalks of rye taken
from a neighbouring field, because they fancied that by so doing they
would not grow weary in reaping the corn at harvest.[4