Bonfires were lit in almost all the hamlets of Poitou on the Eve of St. John.  People marched round them thrice, carrying a branch of walnut in their hand.  Shepherdesses and children passed sprigs of mullein (verbascum) and nuts across the flames; the nuts were supposed to cure toothache, and the mullein to protect the cattle from sickness and sorcery.  When the fire died down people took some of the ashes home with them, either to keep them in the house as a preservative against thunder or to scatter them on the fields for the purpose of destroying corn-cockles and darnel.  Stones were also placed round the fire, and it was believed that the first to lift one of these stones next morning would find under it the hair of St. John.[477] In Poitou also it used to be customary on the Eve of St. John to trundle a blazing wheel wrapt in straw over the fields to fertilize them.[478] This last custom is said to be now extinct,[479] but it is still usual, or was so down to recent years, in Poitou to kindle fires on this day at cross-roads or on the heights.  The oldest or youngest person present sets a light to the pile, which consists of broom, gorse, and heath.  A bright and crackling blaze shoots up, but soon dies down, and over it the young folk leap.  They also throw stones into it, picking the stone according to the size of the turnips that they wish to have that year.  It is said that “the good Virgin” comes and sits on the prettiest of the stones, and next morning they see there her beautiful golden tresses.  At Lussac, in Poitou, the lighting of the midsummer bonfire is still an affair of some ceremony.  A pyramid of faggots is piled round a tree or tall pole on the ground where the fair is held; the priest goes in procession to the spot and kindles the pile.  When prayers have been said and the clergy have withdrawn, the people continue to march round the fire, telling their beads, but it is not till the flames have begun to die down that the youth jump over them.  A brand from the midsummer bonfire is supposed to be a preservative against thunder.[480]

[The Midsummer fires in the departments of Vienne and Deux-Sevres and in the provinces of Saintonge and Aunis.]

In the department of Vienne the bonfire was kindled by the oldest man, and before the dance round the flames began it was the custom to pass across them a great bunch of mullein (bouillon blanc) and a branch of walnut, which next morning before sunrise were fastened over the door of the chief cattle-shed.[481] A similar custom prevailed in the neighbouring department of Deux-Sevres; but here it was the priest who kindled the bonfire, and old men used to put embers of the fire in their wooden shoes as a preservative against many evils.[482] In some towns and villages of Saintonge and Aunis, provinces of Western France now mostly comprised in the department of Charente Inferieure, the fires of St. John are still kindled on Midsummer Eve, but the custom is neither so common nor carried