[The Midsummer fires among the Letts of Russia; Midsummer Day in ancient Rome.]

Among the Letts who inhabit the Baltic provinces of Russia the most joyful festival of the year is held on Midsummer Day.  The people drink and dance and sing and adorn themselves and their houses with flowers and branches.  Chopped boughs of fir are strewn about the rooms, and leaves are stuck in the roofs.  In every farm-yard a birch tree is set up, and every person of the name of John who enters the farm that day must break off a twig from the tree and hang up on its branches in return a small present for the family.  When the serene twilight of the summer night has veiled the landscape, bonfires gleam on all the hills, and wild shouts of “Ligho!  Ligho!” echo from the woods and fields.  In Riga the day is a festival of flowers.  From all the neighbourhood the peasants stream into the city laden with flowers and garlands.  A market of flowers is held in an open square and on the chief bridge over the river; here wreaths of immortelles, which grow wild in the meadows and woods, are sold in great profusion and deck the houses of Riga for long afterwards.  Roses, too, are now at the prime of their beauty, and masses of them adorn the flower-stalls.  Till far into the night gay crowds parade the streets to music or float on the river in gondolas decked with flowers.[440] So long ago in ancient Rome barges crowned with flowers and crowded with revellers used to float down the Tiber on Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June,[441] and no doubt the strains of music were wafted as sweetly across the water to listeners on the banks as they still are to the throngs of merrymakers at Riga.

[The Midsummer fires among the South Slavs.]

Bonfires are commonly kindled by the South Slavonian peasantry on Midsummer Eve, and lads and lasses dance and shout round them in the usual way.  The very names of St. John’s Day (Ivanje) and the St. John’s fires (kries) are said to act like electric sparks on the hearts and minds of these swains, kindling a thousand wild, merry, and happy fancies and ideas in their rustic breasts.  At Kamenagora in Croatia the herdsmen throw nine three-year old vines into the bonfire, and when these burst into flames the young men who are candidates for matrimony jump through the blaze.  He who succeeds in leaping over the fire without singeing himself will be married within the year.  At Vidovec in Croatia parties of two girls and one lad unite to kindle a Midsummer bonfire and to leap through the flames; he or she who leaps furthest will soonest wed.  Afterwards lads and lasses dance in separate rings, but the ring of lads bumps up against the ring of girls and breaks it, and the girl who has to let go her neighbour’s hand will forsake her true love hereafter.[442] In Servia on Midsummer Eve herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the sheepfolds and cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow the torches to burn out.[443]