Black Forest, on Midsummer Day the village boys used to collect faggots and straw on some steep and conspicuous height, and they spent some time in making circular wooden discs by slicing the trunk of a pine-tree across.  When darkness had fallen, they kindled the bonfire, and then, as it blazed up, they lighted the discs at it, and, after swinging them to and fro at the end of a stout and supple hazel-wand, they hurled them one after the other, whizzing and flaming, into the air, where they described great arcs of fire, to fall at length, like shooting-stars, at the foot of the mountain.[411] In many parts of Alsace and Lorraine the midsummer fires still blaze annually or did so not very many years ago.[412] At Speicher in the Eifel, a district which lies on the middle Rhine, to the west of Coblentz, a bonfire used to be kindled in front of the village on St. John’s Day, and all the young people had to jump over it.  Those who failed to do so were not allowed to join the rest in begging for eggs from house to house.  Where no eggs were given, they drove a wedge into the keyhole of the door.  On this day children in the Eifel used also to gather flowers in the fields, weave them into garlands, and throw the garlands on the roofs or hang them on the doors of the houses.  So long as the flowers remained there, they were supposed to guard the house from fire and lightning.[413] In the southern Harz district and in Thuringia the Midsummer or St. John’s fires used to be commonly lighted down to about the middle of the nineteenth century, and the custom has probably not died out.  At Edersleben, near Sangerhausen, a high pole was planted in the ground and a tar-barrel was hung from it by a chain which reached to the ground.  The barrel was then set on fire and swung round the pole amid shouts of joy.[414]

[Midsummer fires kindled by the friction of wood in Germany and Switzerland; driving away demons and witches.]

According to one account, German tradition required that the midsummer fire should be lighted, not from a common hearth, but by the friction of two sorts of wood, namely oak and fir.[415] In some old farm-houses of the Surenthal and Winenthal, in Switzerland, a couple of holes or a whole row of them may be seen facing each other in the door-posts of the barn or stable.  Sometimes the holes are smooth and round; sometimes they are deeply burnt and blackened.  The explanation of them is this.  About midsummer, but especially on Midsummer Day, two such holes are bored opposite each other, into which the extremities of a strong pole are fixed.  The holes are then stuffed with tow steeped in resin and oil; a rope is looped round the pole, and two young men, who must be brothers or must have the same baptismal name, and must be of the same age, pull the ends of the rope backwards and forwards so as to make the pole revolve rapidly, till smoke and sparks issue from the two holes in the door-posts.  The sparks are caught and blown up with tinder, and this is the new and