in throwing the first they say, “Gold of pleasure (a plant with yellow flowers) into the fire!” in throwing the second they say, “Weeds to the unploughed land!” but in throwing the third they cry, “Flax on my field!” The fire is said to keep the witches from the cattle.[446] According to others, it ensures that for the whole year the milk shall be “as pure as silver and as the stars in the sky, and the butter as yellow as the sun and the fire and the gold."[447] In the Esthonian island of Oesel, while they throw fuel into the midsummer fire, they call out, “Weeds to the fire, flax to the field,” or they fling three billets into the flames, saying, “Flax grow long!” And they take charred sticks from the bonfire home with them and keep them to make the cattle thrive.  In some parts of the island the bonfire is formed by piling brushwood and other combustibles round a tree, at the top of which a flag flies.  Whoever succeeds in knocking down the flag with a pole before it begins to burn will have good luck.  Formerly the festivities lasted till daybreak, and ended in scenes of debauchery which looked doubly hideous by the growing light of a summer morning.[448]

[The Midsummer fires among the Finns and Cheremiss of Russia.]

Still farther north, among a people of the same Turanian stock, we learn from an eye-witness that Midsummer Night used to witness a sort of witches’ sabbath on the top of every hill in Finland.  The bonfire was made by setting up four tall birches in a square and piling the intermediate space with fuel.  Round the roaring flames the people sang and drank and gambolled in the usual way.[449] Farther east, in the valley of the Volga, the Cheremiss celebrate about midsummer a festival which Haxthausen regarded as identical with the midsummer ceremonies of the rest of Europe.  A sacred tree in the forest, generally a tall and solitary oak, marks the scene of the solemnity.  All the males assemble there, but no woman may be present.  A heathen priest lights seven fires in a row from north-west to south-east; cattle are sacrificed and their blood poured in the fires, each of which is dedicated to a separate deity.  Afterwards the holy tree is illumined by lighted candles placed on its branches; the people fall on their knees and with faces bowed to the earth pray that God would be pleased to bless them, their children, their cattle, and their bees, grant them success in trade, in travel, and in the chase, enable them to pay the Czar’s taxes, and so forth.[450]

[The Midsummer fires in France; Bossuet on the Midsummer festival.]

When we pass from the east to the west of Europe we still find the summer solstice celebrated with rites of the same general character.  Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer prevailed so commonly in France that there was hardly a town or a village, we are told, where they were not kindled.[451] Though the pagan origin of the custom may be regarded as