CHAPTER VIII. THE MAGIC FLOWERS OF MIDSUMMER EVE.

(M36) A feature of the great midsummer festival remains to be considered, which may perhaps help to clear up the doubt as to the meaning of the fire-ceremonies and their relation to Druidism. For in France and England, the countries where the sway of the Druids is known to have been most firmly established, Midsummer Eve is still the time for culling certain magic plants, whose evanescent virtue can be secured at this mystic season alone. Indeed all over Europe antique fancies of the same sort have lingered about Midsummer Eve, imparting to it a fragrance of the past, like withered rose leaves that, found by chance in the pages of an old volume, still smell of departed summers. Thus in Saintonge and Aunis, two of the ancient provinces of Western France, we read that “of all the festivals for which the merry bells ring out there is not one which has given rise to a greater number of superstitious practices than the festival of St. John the Baptist. The Eve of St. John was the day of all days for gathering the wonderful herbs by means of which you could combat fever, cure a host of diseases, and guard yourself against sorcerers and their spells. But in order to attain these results two conditions had to be observed; first, you must be fasting when you gathered the herbs, and second, you must cull them before the sun rose. If these conditions were not fulfilled, the plants had no special virtue.”(117) In the neighbouring province of Perigord the person who gathered the magic herbs before sunrise at this season had to walk backwards, to mutter some mystic words, and to perform certain ceremonies. The plants thus collected were carefully kept as an infallible cure for fever; placed above beds and the doors of houses and of cattle-sheds they protected man and beast from disease, witchcraft, and accident.(118) In Normandy a belief in the marvellous properties of herbs and plants, of flowers and seeds and leaves gathered, with certain traditional rites, on the Eve or the Day of St. John has remained part of the peasant’s creed to this day. Thus he fancies that seeds of vegetables and plants, which have been collected on St. John’s Eve, will keep better than others, and that flowers plucked that day will never fade.(119) Indeed so widespread in France used to be the faith in the magic virtue of herbs culled on that day that there is a French proverb “to employ all the herbs of St. John in an affair,” meaning “to leave no stone unturned.”(120) In the early years of the nineteenth century a traveller reported that at Marseilles, “on the Eve of St. John, the Place de Noailles and the course are cleaned. From three o’clock in the morning the country-people flock thither, and by six o’clock the whole place is covered with a considerable quantity of flowers and herbs, aromatic or otherwise. The folk attribute superstitious virtues to these plants; they are persuaded that if they have been gathered the same day before sunrise they are fitted to heal many ailments. People buy them emulously to give away in presents and to fill the house with.”(121) On the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve), before sunset, the peasants of Perche still gather the herb called St. John’s herb. It is a creeping plant, very aromatic, with small flowers of a violet blue. Other scented flowers are added, and out of the posies they make floral crosses and crowns, which they hang up over the doors of houses and stables. Such floral decorations are sold like the box-wood on Palm Sunday, and the withered wreaths are kept from year to year. If an animal dies, it may be a cow, they carefully clean the byre or the stable, make a pile of these faded garlands, and set them on fire, having previously closed up all the openings and interstices, so that the whole place is thoroughly fumigated. This is thought to eradicate the germs of disease from the byre or stable.(122) At Nellingen, near Saaralben, in Lorraine the hedge doctors collect their store of simples between eleven o’clock and noon on Midsummer Day; and on that day nut-water is brewed from nuts that have been picked on the stroke of noon. Such water is a panacea for all ailments.(123) In the Vosges Mountains they say that wizards have but one day in the year, and but one hour in that day, to find and cull the baleful herbs which they use in their black art. That day is the Eve of St. John, and that hour is the time when the church bells are ringing the noonday Angelus. Hence in many villages they say that the bells ought not to ring at noon on that day.(124)

(M37) In the Tyrol also they think that the witching hour is when the _Ave Maria_ bell is ringing on Midsummer Eve, for then the witches go forth to gather the noxious plants whereby they raise thunderstorms. Therefore in many districts the bells ring for a shorter time than usual that evening;(125) at Folgareit the sexton used to steal quietly into the church, and when the clock struck three he contented himself with giving a few pulls to the smallest of the bells.(126) At Rengen, in the Eifel Mountains, the sexton rings the church bell for an hour on the afternoon of Midsummer Day. As soon as the bell begins to ring, the children run out into the meadows, gather flowers, and weave them into garlands which they throw on the roofs of the houses and buildings. There the garlands remain till the wind blows them away. It is believed that they protect the houses against fire and thunderstorms.(127) At Niederehe, in the Eifel Mountains, on Midsummer Day little children used to make wreaths and posies out of “St. John’s flowers and Maiden-flax” and throw them on the roofs. Some time afterwards, when the wild gooseberries were ripe, all the children would gather round an old woman on a Sunday afternoon, and taking the now withered wreaths and posies with them march out of the village, praying while they walked. Wreaths and posies were then thrown in a heap and kindled, whereupon the children snatched them up, still burning, and ran and fumigated the wild gooseberry bushes with the smoke. Then they returned with the old woman to the village, knelt down before her, and received her blessing. From that time the children were free to pick and eat the wild gooseberries.(128) In the Mark of Brandenburg the peasants gather all sorts of simples on Midsummer Day, because they are of opinion that the drugs produce their medicinal effect only if they have been culled at that time. Many of these plants, especially roots, must be dug up at midnight and in silence.(129) In Mecklenburg not merely is a special healing virtue ascribed to simples collected on Midsummer Day; the very smoke of such plants, if they are burned in the fire, is believed to protect a house against thunder and lightning, and to still the raging of the storm.(130) The Wends of the Spreewald twine wreaths of herbs and flowers at midsummer, and hang them up in their rooms; and when any one gets a fright he will lay some of the leaves and blossoms on hot coals and fumigate himself with the smoke.(131) In Eastern Prussia, some two hundred years ago, it used to be customary on Midsummer Day to make up a bunch of herbs of various sorts and fasten it to a pole, which was then put up over the gate or door through which the corn would be brought in at harvest. Such a pole was called Kaupole, and it remained in its place till the crops had been reaped and garnered. Then the bunch of herbs was taken down; part of it was put with the corn in the barn to keep rats and mice from the grain, and part was kept as a remedy for diseases of all sorts.(132)

(M38) The Germans of West Bohemia collect simples on St. John’s Night, because they believe the healing virtue of the plants to be especially powerful at that time.(133) The theory and practice of the Huzuls in the Carpathian Mountains are similar; they imagine that the plants gathered on that night are not only medicinal but possess the power of restraining the witches; some say that the herbs should be plucked in twelve gardens or meadows.(134) Among the simples which the Czechs and Moravians of Silesia cull at this season are dandelions, ribwort, and the bloom of the lime-tree.(135) The Esthonians of the island of Oesel gather St. John’s herbs (_Jani rohhud_) on St. John’s Day, tie them up in bunches, and hang them up about the houses to prevent evil spirits from entering. A subsidiary use of the plants is to cure diseases; gathered at that time they have a greater medical value than if they were collected at any other season. Everybody does not choose exactly the same sorts of plants; some gather more and some less, but in the collection St. John’s wort (_Jani rohhi_, _Hypericum perforatum_) should never be wanting.(136) A writer of the early part of the seventeenth century informs us that the Livonians, among whom he lived, were impressed with a belief in the great and marvellous properties possessed by simples which had been culled on Midsummer Day. Such simples, they thought, were sure remedies for fever and for sickness and pestilence in man and beast; but if gathered one day too late they lost all their virtue.(137) Among the Letts of the Baltic provinces of Russia girls and women go about on Midsummer Day crowned with wreaths of aromatic plants, which are afterwards hung up for good luck in the houses. The plants are also dried and given to cows to eat, because they are supposed to help the animals to calve.(138)

(M39) In Bulgaria St. John’s Day is the special season for culling simples. On this day, too, Bulgarian girls gather nosegays of a certain white flower, throw them into a vessel of water, and place the vessel under a rose-tree in bloom. Here it remains all night. Next morning they set it in the courtyard and dance singing round it. An old woman then takes the flowers out of the vessel, and the girls wash themselves with the water, praying that God would grant them health throughout the year. After that the old woman restores her nosegay to each girl and promises her a rich husband.(139) Among the South Slavs generally on St. John’s Eve it is the custom for girls to gather white flowers in the meadows and to place them in a sieve or behind the rafters. A flower is assigned to each member of the household: next morning the flowers are inspected; and he or she whose flower is fresh will be well the whole year, but he or she whose flower is faded will be sickly or die. Garlands are then woven out of the flowers and laid on roofs, folds, and beehives.(140) In some parts of Macedonia on St. John’s Eve the peasants are wont to festoon their cottages and gird their own waists with wreaths of what they call St. John’s flower; it is the blossom of a creeping plant which resembles honeysuckle.(141) Similar notions as to the magical virtue which plants acquire at midsummer have been transported by Europeans to the New World. At La Paz in Bolivia people believe that flowers of mint (_Yerba buena_) gathered before sunrise on St. John’s Day foretell an endless felicity to such as are so lucky as to find them.(142)

(M40) Nor is the superstition confined to Europe and to people of European descent. In Morocco also the Mohammedans are of opinion that certain plants, such as penny-royal, marjoram, and the oleander, acquire a special magic virtue (_baraka_) when they are gathered shortly before midsummer. Hence the people collect these plants at this season and preserve them for magical or medical purposes. For example, branches of oleander are brought into the houses before midsummer and kept under the roof as a charm against the evil eye; but while the branches are being brought in they may not touch the ground, else they would lose their marvellous properties. Cases of sickness caused by the evil eye are cured by fumigating the patients with the smoke of these boughs. The greatest efficacy is ascribed to “the sultan of the oleander,” which is a stalk with four pairs of leaves clustered round it. Such a stalk is always endowed with magical virtue, but that virtue is greatest when the stalk has been cut just before midsummer. Arab women in the Hiaina district of Morocco gather _Daphne gnidium_ on Midsummer Day, dry it in the sun, and make it into a powder which, mixed with water, they daub on the heads of their little children to protect them from sunstroke and vermin and to make their hair grow well. Indeed such marvellous powers do these Arabs attribute to plants at this mystic season that a barren woman will walk naked about a vegetable garden on Midsummer Night in the hope of conceiving a child through the fertilizing influence of the vegetables.(143)

(M41) Sometimes in order to produce the desired effect it is deemed necessary that seven or nine different sorts of plants should be gathered at this mystic season. Norman peasants, who wish to fortify themselves for the toil of harvest, will sometimes go out at dawn on St. John’s Day and pull seven kinds of plants, which they afterwards eat in their soup as a means of imparting strength and suppleness to their limbs in the harvest field.(144) In Mecklenburg maidens are wont to gather seven sorts of flowers at noon on Midsummer Eve. These they weave into garlands, and sleep with them under their pillows. Then they are sure to dream of the men who will marry them.(145) But the flowers on which youthful lovers dream at Midsummer Eve are oftener nine in number. Thus in Voigtland nine different kinds of flowers are twined into a garland at the hour of noon, but they may not enter the dwelling by the door in the usual way; they must be passed through the window, or, if they come in at the door, they must be thrown, not carried, into the house. Sleeping on them that night you will dream of your future wife or future husband.(146) The Bohemian maid, who gathers nine kinds of flowers on which to dream of love at Midsummer Eve, takes care to wrap her hand in a white cloth, and afterwards to wash it in dew; and when she brings her garland home she must speak no word to any soul she meets by the way, for then all the magic virtue of the flowers would be gone.(147) Other Bohemian girls look into the book of fate at this season after a different fashion. They twine their hair with wreaths made of nine sorts of leaves, and go, when the stars of the summer night are twinkling in the sky, to a brook that flows beside a tree. There, gazing on the stream, the girl beholds, beside the broken reflections of the tree and the stars, the watery image of her future lord.(148) So in Masuren maidens gather nosegays of wild flowers in silence on Midsummer Eve. At the midnight hour each girl takes the nosegay and a glass of water, and when she has spoken certain words she sees her lover mirrored in the water.(149)

(M42) Sometimes Bohemian damsels make a different use of their midsummer garlands twined of nine sorts of flowers. They lie down with the garland laid as a pillow under their right ear, and a hollow voice, swooning from underground, proclaims their destiny.(150) Yet another mode of consulting the oracle by means of these same garlands is to throw them backwards and in silence upon a tree at the hour of noon, just when the flowers have been gathered. For every time that the wreath is thrown without sticking to the branches of the tree the girl will have a year to wait before she weds. This mode of divination is practised in Voigtland,(151) East Prussia,(152) Silesia,(153) Belgium,(154) and Wales,(155) and the same thing is done in Masuren, although we are not told that there the wreaths must be composed of nine sorts of flowers.(156) However, in Masuren chaplets of nine kinds of herbs are gathered on St. John’s Eve and put to a more prosaic use than that of presaging the course of true love. They are carefully preserved, and the people brew a sort of tea from them, which they administer as a remedy for many ailments; or they keep the chaplets under their pillows till they are dry, and thereupon dose their sick cattle with them.(157) In Esthonia the virtues popularly ascribed to wreaths of this sort are many and various. These wreaths, composed of nine kinds of herbs culled on the Eve or the Day of St. John, are sometimes inserted in the roof or hung up on the walls of the house, and each of them receives the name of one of the inmates. If the plants which have been thus dedicated to a girl happen to take root and grow in the chinks and crannies, she will soon wed; if they have been dedicated to an older person and wither away, that person will die. The people also give them as medicine to cattle at the time when the animals are driven forth to pasture; or they fumigate the beasts with the smoke of the herbs, which are burnt along with shavings from the wooden threshold. Bunches of the plants are also hung about the house to keep off evil spirits, and maidens lay them under their pillows to dream on.(158) In Sweden the “Midsummer Brooms,” made up of nine sorts of flowers gathered on Midsummer Eve, are put to nearly the same uses. Fathers of families hang up such “brooms” to the rafters, one for each inmate of the house; and he or she whose broom (_quast_) is the first to wither will be the first to die. Girls also dream of their future husbands with these bunches of flowers under their pillows. A decoction made from the flowers is, moreover, a panacea for all disorders, and if a bunch of them be hung up in the cattle shed, the Troll cannot enter to bewitch the beasts.(159) The Germans of Moravia think that nine kinds of herbs gathered on St. John’s Night (Midsummer Eve) are a remedy for fever;(160) and some of the Wends attribute a curative virtue in general to such plants.(161)

(M43) Of the flowers which it has been customary to gather for purposes of magic or divination at midsummer none perhaps is so widely popular as St. John’s wort (_Hypericum perforatum_). The reason for associating this particular plant with the great summer festival is perhaps not far to seek, for the flower blooms about Midsummer Day, and with its bright yellow petals and masses of golden stamens it might well pass for a tiny copy on earth of the great sun which reaches its culminating point in heaven at this season. Gathered on Midsummer Eve, or on Midsummer Day before sunrise, the blossoms are hung on doorways and windows to preserve the house against thunder, witches, and evil spirits; and various healing properties are attributed to the different species of the plant. In the Tyrol they say that if you put St. John’s wort in your shoe before sunrise on Midsummer Day you may walk as far as you please without growing weary. In Scotland people carried it about their persons as an amulet against witchcraft. On the lower Rhine children twine chaplets of St. John’s wort on the morning of Midsummer Day, and throw them on the roofs of the houses. Here, too, the people who danced round the midsummer bonfires used to wear wreaths of these yellow flowers in their hair, and to deck the images of the saints at wayside shrines with the blossoms. Sometimes they flung the flowers into the bonfires. In Sicily they dip St. John’s wort in oil, and so apply it as a balm for every wound. During the Middle Ages the power which the plant notoriously possesses of banning devils won for it the name of _fuga daemonum_; and before witches and wizards were stretched on the rack or otherwise tortured, the flower used to be administered to them as a means of wringing the truth from their lips.(162) In North Wales people used to fix sprigs of St. John’s wort over their doors, and sometimes over their windows, “in order to purify their houses, and by that means drive away all fiends and evil spirits.”(163) In Saintonge and Aunis the flowers served to detect the presence of sorcerers, for if one of these pestilent fellows entered a house, the bunches of St. John’s wort, which had been gathered on Midsummer Eve and hung on the walls, immediately dropped their yellow heads as if they had suddenly faded.(164) However, the Germans of Western Bohemia think that witches, far from dreading St. John’s wort, actually seek the plant on St. John’s Eve.(165) Further, the edges of the calyx and petals of St. John’s wort, as well as their external surface, are marked with dark purple spots and lines, which, if squeezed, yield a red essential oil soluble in spirits.(166) German peasants believe that this red oil is the blood of St. John,(167) and this may be why the plant is supposed to heal all sorts of wounds.(168) In Mecklenburg they say that if you pull up St. John’s wort at noon on Midsummer Day you will find at the root a bead of red juice called St. John’s blood; smear this blood on your shirt just over your heart, and no mad dog will bite you.(169) In the Mark of Brandenburg the same blood, procured in the same manner and rubbed on the barrel of a gun, will make every shot from that gun to hit the mark.(170) According to others, St. John’s blood is found at noon on St. John’s Day, and only then, adhering in the form of beads to the root of a weed called knawel, which grows in sandy soil. But some people say that these beads of red juice are not really the blood of the martyred saint, but only insects resembling the cochineal or kermes-berry.(171) “About Hanover I have often observed devout Roman Catholics going on the morning of St. John’s day to neighbouring sandhills, gathering on the roots of herbs a certain insect (_Coccus Polonica_) looking like drops of blood, and thought by them to be created on purpose to keep alive the remembrance of the foul murder of St. John the Baptist, and only to be met with on the morning of the day set apart for him by the Church. I believe the life of this insect is very ephemeral, but by no means restricted to the twenty-fourth of June.”(172)

(M44) Yet another plant whose root has been thought to yield the blood of St. John is the mouse-ear hawkweed (_Hieracium pilosella_), which grows very commonly in dry exposed places, such as gravelly banks, sunny lawns, and the tops of park walls. “It blossoms from May to the end of July, presenting its elegant sulphur-coloured flowers to the noontide sun, while the surrounding herbage, and even its own foliage, is withered and burnt up”;(173) and these round yellow flowers may be likened not inaptly to the disc of the great luminary whose light they love. At Hildesheim, in Germany, people used to dig up hawkweed, especially on the Gallows’ Hill, when the clocks were striking noon on Midsummer Day; and the blood of St. John, which they found at the roots, was carefully preserved in quills for good luck. A little of it smeared secretly on the clothes was sure to make the wearer fortunate in the market that day.(174) According to some the plant ought to be dug up with a gold coin.(175) Near Gablonz, in Bohemia, it used to be customary to make a bed of St. John’s flowers, as they were called, on St. John’s Eve, and in the night the saint himself came and laid his head on the bed; next morning you could see the print of his head on the flowers, which derived a healing virtue from his blessed touch, and were mixed with the fodder of sick cattle to make them whole.(176) But whether these St. John’s flowers were the mouse-ear hawkweed or not is doubtful.(177)

(M45) More commonly in Germany the name of St. John’s flowers (_Johannisblumen_) appears to be given to the mountain arnica. In Voigtland the mountain arnica if plucked on St. John’s Eve and stuck in the fields, laid under the roof, or hung on the wall, is believed to protect house and fields from lightning and hail.(178) So in some parts of Bavaria they think that no thunderstorm can harm a house which has a blossom of mountain arnica in the window or the roof, and in the Tyrol the same flower fastened to the door will render the dwelling fire-proof. But it is needless to remark that the flower, which takes its popular name from St. John, will be no protection against either fire or thunder unless it has been culled on the saint’s own day.(179)

(M46) Another plant which possesses wondrous virtues, if only it be gathered on the Eve or the Day of St. John, is mugwort (_Artemisia vulgaris_). Hence in France it goes by the name of the herb of St. John.(180) Near Péronne, in the French department of Somme, people used to go out fasting before sunrise on St. John’s Day to cull the plant; put among the wheat in the barn it protected the corn against mice. In Artois people carried bunches of mugwort, or wore it round their body;(181) in Poitou they still wear girdles of mugwort or hemp when they warm their backs at the midsummer fire as a preservative against backache at harvest;(182) and the custom of wearing girdles of mugwort on the Eve or Day of St. John has caused the plant to be popularly known in Germany and Bohemia as St. John’s girdle. In Bohemia such girdles are believed to protect the wearer for the whole year against ghosts, magic, misfortune, and sickness. People also weave garlands of the plant and look through them at the midsummer bonfire or put them on their heads; and by doing so they ensure that their heads will not ache nor their eyes smart all that year. Another Bohemian practice is to make a decoction of mugwort which has been gathered on St. John’s Day; then, when your cow is bewitched and will yield no milk, you have only to wash the animal thrice with the decoction and the spell will be broken.(183) In Germany, people used to crown their heads or gird their bodies with mugwort, which they afterwards threw into the midsummer bonfire, pronouncing certain rhymes and believing that they thus rid themselves of all their ill-luck.(184) Sometimes wreaths or girdles of mugwort were kept in houses, cattle-sheds, and sheep-folds throughout the year.(185) In Normandy such wreaths are a protection against thunder and thieves;(186) and stalks of mugwort hinder witches from laying their spells on the butter.(187) In the Isle of Man on Midsummer Eve people gathered _barran fealoin_ or mugwort “as a preventive against the influence of witchcraft”;(188) in Belgium bunches of mugwort gathered on St. John’s Day or Eve and hung on the doors of stables and houses are believed to bring good luck and to furnish a protection against sorcery.(189) It is curious to find that in China a similar use is, or was formerly, made of mugwort at the same season of the year. In an old Chinese calendar we read that “on the fifth day of the fifth month the four classes of the people gambol in the herbage, and have competitive games with plants of all kinds. They pluck mugwort and make dolls of it, which they suspend over their gates and doors, in order to expel poisonous airs or influences.”(190) On this custom Professor J. J. M. de Groot observes: “Notice that the plant owed its efficacy to the time when it was plucked: a day denoting the midsummer festival, when light and fire of the universe are in their apogee.”(191) On account of this valuable property mugwort is used by Chinese surgeons in cautery.(192) The Ainos of Japan employ bunches of mugwort in exorcisms, “because it is thought that demons of disease dislike the smell and flavour of this herb.”(193) It is an old German belief that he who carries mugwort in his shoes will not grow weary.(194) In Mecklenburg, they say that if you will dig up a plant of mugwort at noon on Midsummer Day, you will find under the root a burning coal, which vanishes away as soon as the church bells have ceased to ring. If you find the coal and carry it off in silence, it will prove a remedy for all sorts of maladies.(195) According to another German superstition, such a coal will turn to gold.(196) English writers record the popular belief that a rare coal is to be found under the root of mugwort at a single hour of a single day in the year, namely, at noon or midnight on Midsummer Eve, and that this coal will protect him who carries it on his person from plague, carbuncle, lightning, fever, and ague.(197) In Eastern Prussia, on St. John’s Eve, people can foretell a marriage by means of mugwort; they bend two stalks of the growing plant outward, and then observe whether the stalks, after straightening themselves again, incline towards each other or not.(198)

(M47) A similar mode of divination has been practised both in England and in Germany with the orpine (_Sedum telephium_), a plant which grows on a gravelly or chalky soil about hedges, the borders of fields, and on bushy hills. It flowers in August, and the blossoms consist of dense clustered tufts of crimson or purple petals; sometimes, but rarely, the flowers are white.(199) In England the plant is popularly known as Midsummer Men, because people used to plant slips of them in pairs on Midsummer Eve, one slip standing for a young man and the other for a young woman. If the plants, as they grew up, bent towards each other, the couple would marry; if either of them withered, he or she whom it represented would die.(200) In Masuren, Westphalia, and Switzerland the method of forecasting the future by means of the orpine is precisely the same.(201)

(M48) Another plant which popular superstition has often associated with the summer solstice is vervain.(202) In some parts of Spain people gather vervain after sunset on Midsummer Eve, and wash their faces next morning in the water in which the plants have been allowed to steep overnight.(203) In Belgium vervain is gathered on St. John’s Day and worn as a safeguard against rupture.(204) In Normandy the peasants cull vervain on the Day or the Eve of St. John, believing that, besides its medical properties, it possesses at this season the power of protecting the house from thunder and lightning, from sorcerers, demons, and thieves.(205) Bohemian poachers wash their guns with a decoction of vervain and southernwood, which they have gathered naked before sunrise on Midsummer Day; guns which have been thus treated never miss the mark.(206) In our own country vervain used to be sought for its magical virtues on Midsummer Eve.(207) In the Tyrol they think that he who finds a four-leaved clover while the vesper-bell is ringing on Midsummer Eve can work magic from that time forth.(208) People in Berry say that the four-leaved clover is endowed with all its marvellous virtues only when it has been plucked by a virgin on the night of Midsummer Eve.(209) In Saintonge and Aunis the four-leaved clover, if it be found on the Eve of St. John, brings good luck at play;(210) in Belgium it brings a girl a husband.(211)

(M49) At Kirchvers, in Hesse, people run out to the fields at noon on Midsummer Day to gather camomile; for the flowers, plucked at the moment when the sun is at the highest point of his course, are supposed to possess the medicinal qualities of the plant in the highest degree. In heathen times the camomile flower, with its healing qualities, its yellow calix and white stamens, is said to have been sacred to the kindly and shining Balder and to have borne his name, being called _Balders-brâ_, that is, Balder’s eyelashes.(212) In Westphalia, also, the belief prevails that camomile is most potent as a drug when it has been gathered on Midsummer Day;(213) in Masuren the plant must always be one of the nine different kinds of plants that are culled on Midsummer Eve to form wreaths, and tea brewed from the flower is a remedy for many sorts of maladies.(214)

(M50) Thuringian peasants hold that if the root of the yellow mullein (_Verbascum_) has been dug up in silence with a ducat at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and is worn in a piece of linen next to the skin, it will preserve the wearer from epilepsy.(215) In Prussia girls go out into the fields on Midsummer Day, gather mullein, and hang it up over their beds. The girl whose flower is the first to wither will be the first to die.(216) Perhaps the bright yellow flowers of mullein, clustering round the stem like lighted candles, may partly account for the association of the plant with the summer solstice. In Germany great mullein (_Verbascum thapsus_) is called the King’s Candle; in England it is popularly known as High Taper. The yellow, hoary mullein (_Verbascum pulverulentum_) “forms a golden pyramid a yard high, of many hundreds of flowers, and is one of the most magnificent of British herbaceous plants.”(217) We may trace a relation between mullein and the sun in the Prussian custom of bending the flower, after sunset, towards the point where the sun will rise, and praying at the same time that a sick person or a sick beast may be restored to health.(218)

(M51) In Bohemia poachers fancy that they can render themselves invulnerable by swallowing the seed from a fir-cone which they have found growing upwards before sunrise on the morning of St. John’s Day.(219) Again, wild thyme gathered on Midsummer Day is used in Bohemia to fumigate the trees on Christmas Eve in order that they may grow well;(220) in Voigtland a tea brewed from wild thyme which has been pulled at noon on Midsummer Day is given to women in childbed.(221) The Germans of Western Bohemia brew a tea or wine from elder-flowers, but they say that the brew has no medicinal virtue unless the flowers have been gathered on Midsummer Eve. They do say, too, that whenever you see an elder-tree, you should take off your hat.(222) In the Tyrol dwarf-elder serves to detect witchcraft in cattle, provided of course that the shrub has been pulled up or the branches broken on Midsummer Day.(223) Russian peasants regard the plant known as purple loosestrife (_Lythrum salicaria_) with respect and even fear. Wizards make much use of it. They dig the root up on St. John’s morning, at break of day, without the use of iron tools; and they believe that by means of the root, as well as of the blossom, they can subdue evil spirits and make them serviceable, and also drive away witches and the demons that guard treasures.(224)

(M52) More famous, however, than these are the marvellous properties which popular superstition in many parts of Europe has attributed to the fern at this season. At midnight on Midsummer Eve the plant is supposed to bloom and soon afterwards to seed; and whoever catches the bloom or the seed is thereby endowed with supernatural knowledge and miraculous powers; above all, he knows where treasures lie hidden in the ground, and he can render himself invisible at will by putting the seed in his shoe. But great precautions must be observed in procuring the wondrous bloom or seed, which else quickly vanishes like dew on sand or mist in the air. The seeker must neither touch it with his hand nor let it touch the ground; he spreads a white cloth under the plant, and the blossom or the seed falls into it. Beliefs of this sort concerning fern-seed have prevailed, with trifling variations of detail, in England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia.(225) In Bohemia the magic bloom is said to be golden, and to glow or sparkle like fire.(226) In Russia, they say that at dead of night on Midsummer Eve the plant puts forth buds like glowing coals, which on the stroke of twelve burst open with a clap like thunder and light up everything near and far.(227) In the Azores they say that the fern only blooms at midnight on St. John’s Eve, and that no one ever sees the flower because the fairies instantly carry it off. But if any one, watching till it opens, throws a cloth over it, and then, when the magic hour has passed, burns the blossoms carefully, the ashes will serve as a mirror in which you can read the fate of absent friends; if your friends are well and happy, the ashes will resume the shape of a lovely flower; but if they are unhappy or dead, the ashes will remain cold and lifeless.(228) In Thuringia people think that he who has on his person or in his house the male fern (_Aspidium filix mas_) cannot be bewitched. They call it St. John’s root (_Johanniswurzel_), and say that it blooms thrice in the year, on Christmas Eve, Easter Eve, and the day of St. John the Baptist; it should be dug up when the sun enters the sign of the lion. Armed with this powerful implement you can detect a sorcerer at any gathering, it may be a wedding feast or what not. All you have to do is to put the root under the tablecloth unseen by the rest of the company, and, if there should be a sorcerer among them, he will turn as pale as death and get up and go away. Fear and horror come over him when the fern-root is under the tablecloth. And when oxen, horses, or other domestic cattle are bewitched by wicked people, you need only take the root at full moon, soak it in water, and sprinkle the cattle with the water, or rub them down with a cloth that has been steeped in it, and witchcraft will have no more power over the animals.(229)

(M53) Once more, people have fancied that if they cut a branch of hazel on Midsummer Eve it would serve them as a divining rod to discover treasures and water. This belief has existed in Moravia, Mecklenburg, and apparently in Scotland.(230) In the Mark of Brandenburg, they say that if you would procure the mystic wand you must go to the hazel by night on Midsummer Eve, walking backwards, and when you have come to the bush you must silently put your hands between your legs and cut a fork-shaped stick; that stick will be the divining-rod, and, as such, will detect treasures buried in the ground. If you have any doubt as to the quality of the wand, you have only to hold it in water; for in that case your true divining-rod will squeak like a pig, but your spurious one will not.(231) In Bavaria they say that the divining-rod should be cut from a hazel bush between eleven and twelve on St. John’s Night, and that by means of it you can discover not only veins of metal and underground springs, but also thieves and murderers and unknown ways. In cutting it you should say, “God greet thee, thou noble twig! With God the Father I seek thee, with God the Son I find thee, with the might of God the Holy Ghost I break thee. I adjure thee, rod and sprig, by the power of the Highest that thou shew me what I order, and that as sure and clear as Mary the Mother of God was a pure virgin when she bare our Lord Jesus, in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, Amen!”(232) In Berlin and the neighbourhood they say that every seventh year there grows a wonderful branch on a hazel bush, and that branch is the divining-rod. Only an innocent child, born on a Sunday and nursed in the true faith, can find it on St. John’s Night; to him then all the treasures of the earth lie open.(233) In the Tyrol the divining-rod ought to be cut at new moon, but may be cut either on St. John’s Day or on Twelfth Night. Having got it you baptize it in the name of one of the Three Holy Kings according to the purpose for which you intend to use it: if the rod is to discover gold, you name it Caspar; if it is to reveal silver, you call it Balthasar; and if it is to point out hidden springs of water, you dub it Melchior.(234) In Lechrain the divining-rod is a yearling shoot of hazel with two branches; a good time for cutting it is new moon, and if the sun is rising, so much the better. As for the day of the year, you may take your choice between St. John’s Day, Twelfth Night, and Shrove Tuesday. If cut with the proper form of words, the rod will as usual discover underground springs and hidden treasures.(235)

(M54) Midsummer Eve is also the favourite time for procuring the divining-rod in Sweden. Some say that it should then be cut from a mistletoe bough.(236) However, other people in Sweden are of opinion that the divining-rod (_Slag ruta_) which is obtained on Midsummer Eve ought to be compounded out of four different kinds of wood, to wit, mistletoe, mountain-ash, the aspen, and another; and they say that the mountain-ash which is employed for this purpose should, like the mistletoe, be a parasite growing from the hollow root of a fallen tree, whither the seed was carried by a bird or wafted by the wind. Armed with this fourfold implement of power the treasure-seeker proceeds at sundown to the spot where he expects to find hidden wealth; there he lays the rod on the ground in perfect silence, and when it lies directly over treasure, it will begin to hop about as if it were alive.(237)

(M55) A mystical plant which to some extent serves the same purpose as the divining-rod is the springwort, which is sometimes supposed to be caper-spurge (_Euphorbia lathyris_). In the Harz Mountains they say that many years ago there was a wondrous flower called springwort or Johnswort, which was as rare as it was marvellous. It bloomed only on St. John’s Night (some say under a fern) between the hours of eleven and twelve; but when the last stroke of twelve was struck, the flower vanished away. Only in mountainous regions, where many noble metals reposed in the bosom of the earth, was the flower seen now and then in lonely meadows among the hills. The spirits of the hills wished by means of it to shew to men where their treasures were to be found. The flower itself was yellow and shone like a lamp in the darkness of night. It never stood still, but kept hopping constantly to and fro. It was also afraid of men and fled before them, and no man ever yet plucked it unless he had been set apart by Providence for the task. To him who was lucky enough to cull it the flower revealed all the treasures of the earth, and it made him rich, oh so rich and so happy!(238)

(M56) However, the usual account given of the springwort is somewhat different. They say that the way to procure it is this. You mark a hollow in a tree where a green or black woodpecker has built its nest and hatched its young; you plug up the hole with a wooden wedge; then you hide behind the tree and wait. The woodpecker meantime has flown away but very soon returns with the springwort in its bill. It flutters up to the tree-trunk holding the springwort to the wedge, which at once, as if struck by a hammer, jumps out with a bang. Now is your chance. You rush from your concealment, you raise a loud cry, and in its fright the bird opens its bill and drops the springwort. Quick as thought you reach out a red or white cloth, with which you have taken care to provide yourself, and catch the magic flower as it falls. The treasure is now yours. Before its marvellous power all doors and locks fly open; it can make the bearer of it invisible; and neither steel nor lead can wound the man who carries it in the right-hand pocket of his coat. That is why people in Swabia say of a thief who cannot be caught, “He must surely have a springwort.”(239) The superstition which associates the springwort with the woodpecker is very ancient, for it is recorded by Pliny. It was a vulgar belief, he tells us, that if a shepherd plugged up a woodpecker’s nest in the hollow of a tree with a wedge, the bird would bring a herb which caused the wedge to slip out of the hole; Trebius indeed affirmed that the wedge leaped out with a bang, however hard and fast you might have driven it into the tree.(240) Another flower which possesses the same remarkable power of bursting open all doors and locks is chicory, provided always that you cut the flower with a piece of gold at noon or midnight on St. James’s Day, the twenty-fifth of July. But in cutting it you must be perfectly silent; if you utter a sound, it is all up with you. There was a man who was just about to cut the flower of the chicory, when he looked up and saw a millstone hovering over his head. He fled for his life and fortunately escaped; but had he so much as opened his lips, the millstone would have dropped on him and crushed him as flat as a pancake. However, it is only a rare white variety of the chicory flower which can act as a picklock; the common bright blue flower is perfectly useless for the purpose.(241)

(M57) Many more examples might perhaps be cited of the marvellous virtues which certain plants have been supposed to acquire at the summer solstice, but the foregoing instances may suffice to prove that the superstition is widely spread, deeply rooted, and therefore probably very ancient in Europe. Why should plants be thought to be endowed with these wonderful properties on the longest day more than on any other day of the year? It seems difficult or impossible to explain such a belief except on the supposition that in some mystic way the plants catch from the sun, then at the full height of his power and glory, some fleeting effluence of radiant light and heat, which invests them for a time with powers above the ordinary for the healing of diseases and the unmasking and baffling of all the evil things that threaten the life of man. That the supposition is not purely hypothetical will appear from a folk-tale, to be noticed later on, in which the magic bloom of the fern is directly derived from the sun at noon on Midsummer Day. And if the magic flowers of Midsummer Eve thus stand in direct relation to the sun, which many of them resemble in shape and colour, blooming in the meadows like little yellow suns fallen from the blue sky, does it not become probable that the bonfires kindled at the same time are the artificial, as the flowers are the natural, imitations of the great celestial fire then blazing in all its strength? At least analogy seems to favour the inference and so far to support Mannhardt’s theory, that the bonfires kindled at the popular festivals of Europe, especially at the summer solstice, are intended to reinforce the waning or waxing fires of the sun. Thus if in our enquiry into these fire-festivals the scales of judgment are loaded with the adverse theories of Mannhardt and Westermarck, we may say that the weight, light as it is, of the magic flowers of Midsummer Eve seems to incline the trembling balance back to the side of Mannhardt.

(M58) Nor is it, perhaps, an argument against Mannhardt’s view that the midsummer flowers and plants are so often employed as talismans to break the spells of witchcraft.(242) For granted that employment, which is undeniable, we have still to explain it, and that we can hardly do except by reference to the midsummer sun. And what is here said of the midsummer flowers applies equally to the midsummer bonfires. They too are used to destroy the charms of witches and warlocks; but if they can do so, may it not be in part because fires at midsummer are thought to burn with fiercer fury than at other times by sympathy with the fiercer fervour of the sun? This consideration would bring us back to an intermediate position between the opposing theories, namely, to the view that while the purely destructive aspect of fire is generally the most prominent and apparently the most important at these festivals, we must not overlook the additional force which by virtue of homoeopathic or imitative magic the bonfires may be supposed both to derive from and to impart to the sun, especially at the moment of the summer solstice when his strength is greatest and begins to decline, and when accordingly he can at once give and receive help to the greatest advantage.

(M59) To conclude this part of our subject it may not be amiss to illustrate by a few more miscellaneous examples the belief that Midsummer Eve is one of the great days of the year in which witches and warlocks pursue their nefarious calling; indeed in this respect Midsummer Eve perhaps stands second only to the famous Walpurgis Night (the Eve of May Day). For instance, in the neighbourhood of Lierre, in Belgium, the people think that on the night of Midsummer Eve all witches and warlocks must repair to a certain field which is indicated to them beforehand. There they hold their infernal Sabbath and are passed in review by a hellish magician, who bestows on them fresh powers. That is why old women are most careful, before going to bed on that night, to stop up doors and windows and every other opening in order to bar out the witches and warlocks, who but for this sage precaution might steal into the house and make the first trial of their new powers on the unfortunate inmates.(243) At Rottenburg, in Swabia, people thought that the devil and the witches could do much harm on Midsummer Eve; so they made fast their shutters and bunged up even the chinks and crannies, for wherever air can penetrate, there the devil and witches can worm their way in. All night long, too, from nine in the evening till break of day, the church bells rang to disturb the dreadful beings at their evil work, since there is perhaps no better means of putting the whole devilish crew to flight than the sound of church bells.(244) Down to the second half of the nineteenth century the belief in witches was still widespread in Voigtland, a bleak mountainous region of Central Germany. It was especially on the Eve of May Day (Walpurgis), St. Thomas’s Day, St. John’s Day, and Christmas Eve, as well as on Mondays, that they were dreaded. Then they would come into a neighbour’s house to beg, borrow, or steal something, no matter what; but woe to the poor wretch who suffered them to carry away so much as a chip or splinter of wood; for they would certainly use it to his undoing. On these witching nights the witches rode to their Sabbath on baking-forks and the dashers of churns; but if when they were hurtling through the darkness any one standing below addressed one of the witches by name, she would die within the year. To counteract and undo the spells which witches cast on man and beast, people resorted to all kinds of measures. Thus on the before-mentioned days folk made three crosses on the doors of the byres or guarded them by hanging up St. John’s wort, marjoram, or other equally powerful talismans. Very often, too, the village youth would carry the war into the enemy’s quarters by marching out in a body, cracking whips, firing guns, waving burning besoms, shouting and making an uproar, all for the purpose of frightening and driving away the witches.(245) In Prussia witches and warlocks used regularly to assemble twice a year on Walpurgis Night and the Eve of St. John. The places where they held their infernal Sabbath were various; for example, one was Pogdanzig, in the district of Schlochau. They generally rode on a baking-fork, but often on a black three-legged horse, and they took their departure up the chimney with the words, “Up and away and nowhere to stop!” When they were all gathered on the Blocksberg or Mount of the Witches, they held high revelry, feasting first and then dancing on a tight rope lefthanded-wise to the inspiring strains which an old warlock drew from a drum and a pig’s head.(246) The South Slavs believe that on the night of Midsummer Eve a witch will slink up to the fence of the farmyard and say, “The cheese to me, the lard to me, the butter to me, the milk to me, but the cowhide to thee!” After that the cow will perish miserably and you will be obliged to bury the flesh and sell the hide. To prevent this disaster the thing to do is to go out into the meadows very early on Midsummer morning while the dew is on the grass, collect a quantity of dew in a waterproof mantle, carry it home, and having tethered your cow wash her down with the dew. After that you have only to place a milkpail under her udders and to milk away as hard as you can; the amount of milk that you will extract from that cow’s dugs is quite surprising. Again, the Slovenians about Görz and the Croats of Istria believe that on the same night the witches wage pitched battles with baptized folk, attacking them fiercely with broken stakes of palings and stumps of trees. It is therefore a wise precaution to grub up all the stumps in autumn and carry them home, so that the witches may be weaponless on St. John’s Night. If the stumps are too heavy to be grubbed up, it is well to ram them down tighter into the earth, for then the witches will not be able to pull them up.(247)