intended to last all
night.[530] Thomas Moresin of Aberdeen, a writer of the sixteenth
century, says that on St. Peter's Day, which is the twenty-ninth of
June, the Scotch ran about at night with lighted torches on mountains
and high grounds, "as Ceres did when she roamed the whole earth in
search of Proserpine";[531] and towards the end of the eighteenth
century the parish minister of Loudoun, a district of Ayrshire whose
"bonny woods and braes" have been sung by Burns, wrote that "the custom
still remains amongst the herds and young people to kindle fires in the
high grounds in honour of Beltan. _Beltan_, which in Gaelic signifies
_Baal_, or _Bel's-fire_, was antiently the time of this solemnity. It is
now kept on St. Peter's day."[532]

[The Midsummer fires in Spain and the Azores; divination on Midsummer
Eve in the Azores; the Midsummer fires in Corsica and Sardinia.]

All over Spain great bonfires called _lumes_ are still lit on Midsummer
Eve. They are kept up all night, and the children leap over them in a
certain rhythmical way which is said to resemble the ancient dances. On
the coast, people at this season plunge into the sea; in the inland
districts the villagers go and roll naked in the dew of the meadows,
which is supposed to be a sovereign preservative against diseases of the
skin. On this evening, too, girls who would pry into the future put a
vessel of water on the sill outside their window; and when the clocks
strike twelve, they break an egg in the water and see, or fancy they
see, in the shapes assumed by the pulp, as it blends with the liquid,
the likeness of future bridegrooms, castles, coffins, and so forth. But
generally, as might perhaps have been anticipated, the obliging egg
exhibits the features of a bridegroom.[533] In the Azores, also,
bonfires are lit on Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve), and boys jump over
them for luck. On that night St. John himself is supposed to appear in
person and bless all the seas and waters, driving out the devils and
demons who had been disporting themselves in them ever since the second
day of November; that is why in the interval between the second of
November and the twenty-third of June nobody will bathe in the sea or in
a hot spring. On Midsummer Eve, too, you can always see the devil, if
you will go into a garden at midnight. He is invariably found standing
near a mustard-plant. His reason for adopting this posture has not been
ascertained; perhaps in the chi