In Wales the midsummer fires were kindled on St. John’s Eve and on St. John’s Day.  Three or nine different kinds of wood and charred faggots carefully preserved from the last midsummer were deemed necessary to build the bonfire, which was generally done on rising ground.  Various herbs were thrown into the blaze; and girls with bunches of three or nine different kinds of flowers would take the hands of boys, who wore flowers in their buttonholes and hats, and together the young couples would leap over the fires.  On the same two midsummer days roses and wreaths of flowers were hung over the doors and windows.  “Describing a midsummer fire, an old inhabitant, born in 1809, remembered being taken to different hills in the Vale of Glamorgan to see festivities in which people from all parts of the district participated.  She was at that time about fourteen, and old enough to retain a vivid recollection of the circumstances.  People conveyed trusses of straw to the top of the hill, where men and youths waited for the contributions.  Women and girls were stationed at the bottom of the hill.  Then a large cart-wheel was thickly swathed with straw, and not an inch of wood was left in sight.  A pole was inserted through the centre of the wheel, so that long ends extended about a yard on each side.  If any straw remained, it was made up into torches at the top of tall sticks.  At a given signal the wheel was lighted, and sent rolling downhill.  If this fire-wheel went out before it reached the bottom of the hill, a very poor harvest was promised.  If it kept lighted all the way down, and continued blazing for a long time, the harvest would be exceptionally abundant.  Loud cheers and shouts accompanied the progress of the wheel."[512] At Darowen in Wales small bonfires were kindled on Midsummer Eve.[513] On the same day people in the Isle of Man were wont to light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse round them several times.[514]

[The Midsummer fires in Ireland; passage of people and cattle through the fires; cattle driven through the fire; ashes used to fertilize the fields; the White Horse at the Midsummer fire.]

A writer of the last quarter of the seventeenth century tells us that in Ireland, “on the Eves of St. John Baptist and St. Peter, they always have in every town a bonfire, late in the evenings, and carry about bundles of reeds fast tied and fired; these being dry, will last long, and flame better than a torch, and be a pleasing divertive prospect to the distant beholder; a stranger would go near to imagine the whole country was on fire."[515] Another writer says of the South of Ireland:  “On Midsummer’s Eve, every eminence, near which is a habitation, blazes with bonfires; and round these they carry numerous torches, shouting and dancing, which affords a beautiful sight."[516] An author who described Ireland in the