in the sun’s career, when, after climbing higher and higher day by day in the sky, the luminary stops and thenceforth retraces his steps down the heavenly road.  Such a moment could not but be regarded with anxiety by primitive man so soon as he began to observe and ponder the courses of the great lights across the celestial vault; and having still to learn his own powerlessness in face of the vast cyclic changes of nature, he may have fancied that he could help the sun in his seeming decline—­could prop his failing steps and rekindle the sinking flame of the red lamp in his feeble hand.  In some such thoughts as these the midsummer festivals of our European peasantry may perhaps have taken their rise.  Whatever their origin, they have prevailed all over this quarter of the globe, from Ireland on the west to Russia on the east, and from Norway and Sweden on the north to Spain and Greece on the south.[395] According to a mediaeval writer, the three great features of the midsummer celebration were the bonfires, the procession with torches round the fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel.  He tells us that boys burned bones and filth of various kinds to make a foul smoke, and that the smoke drove away certain noxious dragons which at this time, excited by the summer heat, copulated in the air and poisoned the wells and rivers by dropping their seed into them; and he explains the custom of trundling a wheel to mean that the sun, having now reached the highest point in the ecliptic, begins thenceforward to descend.[396]

[T.  Kirchmeyer’s description of the Midsummer Festival.]

A good general account of the midsummer customs, together with some of the reasons popularly alleged for observing them, is given by Thomas Kirchmeyer, a writer of the sixteenth century, in his poem The Popish Kingdome:—­

“Then doth the joyfull feast of John the Baptist take his turne, When bonfiers great with loftie flame, in every towne doe burne; And yong men round about with maides, doe daunce in every streete, With garlands wrought of Motherwort, or else with Vervain sweete, And many other flowres faire, with Violets in their handes, Whereas they all do fondly thinke, that whosoever standes, And thorow the flowres beholds the flame, his eyes shall feele no paine.  When thus till night they daunced have, they through the fire amaine With striving mindes doe runne, and all their hearbes they cast therin, And then with wordes devout and prayers, they solemnely begin, Desiring God that all their illes may there consumed bee,
Whereby they thinke through all that yeare from Agues to be free.  Some others get a rotten wheele, all worne and cast aside, Which covered round about with strawe, and tow, they closely hide:  And caryed to some mountaines top, being all with fire light, They hurle it downe with violence, when darke appeares the night:  Resembling much the Sunne, that from the heavens downe should fal, A straunge and monstrous sight it seemes, and fearfull to them all; But they suppose their mischiefes all are likewise throwne to hell, And that from harmes and daungers now, in safetie here they dwell."[397]