a tall summer pole with a large bush at the top was fixed in the centre of the bonfire.[509] The Cornish fires at this season appear to have been commonly lit on high and conspicuous hills, such as Tregonan, Godolphin, Carnwarth, and Cam Brea.  When it grew dusk on Midsummer Eve, old men would hobble away to some height whence they counted the fires and drew a presage from their number.[510] “It is the immemorial usage in Penzance, and the neighbouring towns and villages, to kindle bonfires and torches on Midsummer-eve; and on Midsummer-day to hold a fair on Penzance quay, where the country folks assemble from the adjoining parishes in great numbers to make excursions on the water.  St. Peter’s Eve (the twenty-eighth of June) is distinguished by a similar display of bonfires and torches, although the ‘quay-fair’ on St. Peter’s-day (the twenty-ninth of June), has been discontinued upwards of forty years.  On these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in Penzance.  On either side of this line young men and women pass up and down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those of the tar-barrels.  Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm, are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets.  In St. Just, and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their fathers’ employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same substance.  As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same little batteries serve for many years.  On these nights, Mount’s Bay has a most animating appearance, although not equal to what was annually witnessed at the beginning of the present century, when the whole coast, from the Land’s End to the Lizard, wherever a town or a village existed, was lighted up with these stationary or moving fires.  In the early part of the evening, children may be seen wearing wreaths of flowers—­a custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when they danced around the fires.  At the close of the fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in hand, forming a long string, and run through the streets, playing ‘thread the needle,’ heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and oftentimes leaping over the yet glowing embers.  I have on these occasions seen boys following one another, jumping through flames higher than themselves."[511]

[The Midsummer fires in Wales and the Isle of Man; burning wheel rolled down hill.]