[The Midsummer fires among the Magyars of Hungary.]

Among the Magyars in Hungary the midsummer fire-festival is marked by the same features that meet us in so many parts of Europe.  On Midsummer Eve in many places it is customary to kindle bonfires on heights and to leap over them, and from the manner in which the young people leap the bystanders predict whether they will marry soon.  At Nograd-Ludany the young men and women, each carrying a truss of straw, repair to a meadow, where they pile the straw in seven or twelve heaps and set it on fire.  Then they go round the fire singing, and hold a bunch of iron-wort in the smoke, while they say, “No boil on my body, no sprain in my foot!” This holding of the flowers over the flames is regarded, we are told, as equally important with the practice of walking through the fire barefoot and stamping it out.  On this day also many Hungarian swineherds make fire by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and through the fire thus made they drive their pigs to preserve them from sickness.[444] In villages on the Danube, where the population is a cross between Magyar and German, the young men and maidens go to the high banks of the river on Midsummer Eve; and while the girls post themselves low down the slope, the lads on the height above set fire to little wooden wheels and, after swinging them to and fro at the end of a wand, send them whirling through the air to fall into the Danube.  As he does so, each lad sings out the name of his sweetheart, and she listens well pleased down below.[445]

[The Midsummer fires among the Esthonians; the Midsummer fires in Oesel.]

The Esthonians of Russia, who, like the Magyars, belong to the great Turanian family of mankind, also celebrate the summer solstice in the usual way.  On the Eve of St. John all the people of a farm, a village, or an estate, walk solemnly in procession, the girls decked with flowers, the men with leaves and carrying bundles of straw under their arms.  The lads carry lighted torches or flaming hoops steeped in tar at the top of long poles.  Thus they go singing to the cattle-sheds, the granaries, and so forth, and afterwards march thrice round the dwelling-house.  Finally, preceded by the shrill music of the bagpipes and shawms, they repair to a neighbouring hill, where the materials of a bonfire have been collected.  Tar-barrels filled with combustibles are hung on poles, or the trunk of a felled tree has been set up with a great mass of juniper piled about it in the form of a pyramid.  When a light has been set to the pile, old and young gather about it and pass the time merrily with song and music till break of day.  Every one who comes brings fresh fuel for the fire, and they say, “Now we all gather together, where St. John’s fire burns.  He who comes not to St. John’s fire will have his barley full of thistles, and his oats full of weeds.”  Three logs are thrown into the fire with special ceremony;