ed on the
Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter's day; and Midsummer is thence,
in the Cornish tongue, called _Goluan_, which signifies both light and
rejoicing. At these fires the Cornish attend with lighted torches,
tarred and pitched at the end, and make their perambulations round their
fires, going from village to village and carrying their torches before
them; this is certainly the remains of Druid superstition; for, _Faces
praeferre_, to carry lighted torches was reckoned a kind of gentilism,
and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils."[508] At
Penzance and elsewhere in the county the people danced and sang about
the bonfires on Midsummer Eve. On Whiteborough, a large tumulus near
Launceston, a huge bonfire used to be kindled on Midsummer Eve; a tall
summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the centre of the
bonfire.[509] The Cornish fires at this season appear to have been
commonly lit on high and conspicuous hills, such as Tregonan, Godolphin,
Carnwarth, and Cam Brea. When it grew dusk on Midsummer Eve, old men
would hobble away to some height whence they counted the fires and drew
a presage from their number.[510] "It is the immemorial usage in
Penzance, and the neighbouring towns and villages, to kindle bonfires
and torches on Midsummer-eve; and on Midsummer-day to hold a fair on
Penzance quay, where the country folks assemble from the adjoining
parishes in great numbers to make excursions on the water. St. Peter's
Eve (the twenty-eighth of June) is distinguished by a similar display of
bonfires and torches, although the 'quay-fair' on St. Peter's-day (the
twenty-ninth of June), has been discontinued upwards of forty years. On
these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large
bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in
Penzance. On either side of this line young men and women pass up and
down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of
folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between
three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those
of the tar-barrels. Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm,
are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets. In St.
Just, and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their
fathers' employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with
gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same