home a charred stick or some cinders; and the fire-brigade, playing their hose on what remains, extinguishes the smouldering fire.  The people preserve the charred sticks and cinders throughout the year, believing that these relics of St John’s bonfire have power to guard them from lightning and from contagious diseases.[465] At Chateau-Thierry, a town of the department of Aisne, between Paris and Reims, the custom of lighting bonfires and dancing round them at the midsummer festival of St. John lasted down to about 1850; the fires were kindled especially when June had been rainy, and the people thought that the lighting of the bonfires would cause the rain to cease.[466]

[The Midsummer fires in Beauce and Perche; the fires as a protection against witchcraft.]

In Beauce and Perche, two neighbouring districts of France to the south-west of Paris, the midsummer bonfires have nearly or wholly disappeared, but formerly they were commonly kindled and went by the name of the “fires of St. John.”  The site of the bonfire was either the village square or beside the cross in the cemetery.  Here a great pile of faggots, brushwood, and grass was accumulated about a huge branch, which bore at the top a crown of fresh flowers.  The priest blessed the bonfire and the people danced round it.  When it blazed and crackled, the bystanders thrust their heads into the puffs of smoke, in the belief that it would preserve them from a multitude of ills; and when the fire was burnt out, they rushed upon the charred embers and ashes and carried them home, imagining that they had a secret virtue to guard their houses from being struck by lightning or consumed by fire.  Some of the Perche farmers in the old days, not content with the public bonfire, used to light little private bonfires in their farmyards and make all their cattle pass through the smoke and flames for the purpose of protecting them against witchcraft or disease.[467]

[The Midsummer fires in the Ardennes, the Vosges, and the Jura; the Midsummer fires in Franche-Comte; the Midsummer fires in Berry and other parts of Central France.]

In the department of the Ardennes every one was wont to contribute his faggot to the midsummer bonfire, and the clergy marched at the head of the procession to kindle it.  Failure to light the fires would, in the popular belief, have exposed the fields to the greatest danger.  At Revin the young folk, besides dancing round the fire to the strains of the village fiddler, threw garlands of flowers across the flames to each other.[468] In the Vosges it is still customary to kindle bonfires upon the hill-tops on Midsummer Eve; the people believe that the fires help to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure good crops.[469] In the Jura Mountains the midsummer bonfires went by the name of ba or beau.  They were lit on the most conspicuous points of the landscape.[470] Near St. Jean, in the Jura, it appears that at this season young people still repair to the