stival days in the
evenings after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the
streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them; the wealthier
sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out
tables on the vigils furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on
the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they
would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry
with them in great familiarity, praising God for His benefits bestowed
on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst
neighbours that being before at controversy, were there, by the labour
of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and
also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the
air. On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the
Apostles, every man's door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel,
St John's wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with
garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning
in them all the night; some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought,
containing hundreds of lamps alight at once, which made a goodly show,
namely, in New Fish Street, Thames Street, etc."[496] In the sixteenth
century the Eton boys used to kindle a bonfire on the east side of the
church both on St John's Day and on St. Peter's Day.[497] Writing in the
second half of the seventeenth century, the antiquary John Aubrey tells
us that bonfires were still kindled in many places on St. John's Night,
but that the civil wars had thrown many of these old customs out of
fashion. Wars, he adds, extinguish superstition as well as religion and
laws, and there is nothing like gunpowder for putting phantoms to
flight.[498]

[The Midsummer fires in the north of England; the Midsummer fires in
Northumberland.]

In the north of England these fires used to be lit in the open streets.
Young and old gathered round them, and while the young leaped over the
fires and engaged in games, their elders looked on and probably
remembered with regret the days when they used to foot it as nimbly.
Sometimes the fires were kindled on the tops of high hills. The people
also carried firebrands about the fields.[499] The custom of kindling
bonfires on Midsummer Eve prevailed all over Cumberland down to the
second half of the eighteenth century.[500] In Northumberland the custom
seems to