last man of the chain had a hand free, their business was to surround and seize thrice the future Green Wolf, who in his efforts to escape belaboured the brothers with a long wand which he carried.  When at last they succeeded in catching him they carried him to the burning pile and made as if they would throw him on it.  This ceremony over, they returned to the house of the Green Wolf, where a supper, still of the most meagre fare, was set before them.  Up till midnight a sort of religious solemnity prevailed.  No unbecoming word might fall from the lips of any of the company, and a censor, armed with a hand-bell, was appointed to mark and punish instantly any infraction of the rule.  But at the stroke of twelve all this was changed.  Constraint gave way to license; pious hymns were replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the shrill quavering notes of the village fiddle hardly rose above the roar of voices that went up from the merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf.  Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, was celebrated by the same personages with the same noisy gaiety.  One of the ceremonies consisted in parading, to the sound of musketry, an enormous loaf of consecrated bread, which, rising in tiers, was surmounted by a pyramid of verdure adorned with ribbons.  After that the holy handbells, deposited on the step of the altar, were entrusted as insignia of office to the man who was to be the Green Wolf next year.[463]

[The Midsummer fires in Picardy.]

In the canton of Breteuil in Picardy (department of Oise) the priest used to kindle the midsummer bonfire, and the people marched thrice round it in procession.  Some of them took ashes of the fire home with them to protect the houses against lightning.[464] The custom is, or was down to recent years, similar at Vorges, near Laon.  An enormous pyre, some fifty or sixty feet high, supported in the middle by a tall pole, is constructed every year on the twenty-third of June, the Eve of St. John.  It stands at one end of the village, and all the inhabitants contribute fuel to it:  a cart goes round the village in the morning, by order of the mayor, collecting combustibles from house to house:  no one would dream of refusing to comply with the customary obligation.  In the evening, after a service in honour of St. John has been performed in the church, the clergy, the mayor, the municipal authorities, the rural police, and the fire-brigade march in procession to the bonfire, accompanied by the inhabitants and a crowd of idlers drawn by curiosity from the neighbouring villages.  After addressing the throng in a sermon, to which they pay little heed, the parish priest sprinkles the pyre with holy water, and taking a lighted torch from the hand of an assistant sets fire to the pile.  The enormous blaze, flaring up against the dark sky of the summer night, is seen for many miles around, particularly from the hill of Laon.  When it has died down into a huge heap of glowing embers and grey ashes, every one carries