fires is that of the minor sexual climax. Mannhardt was
perhaps the first to show how intimately these spring and early summer
festivals--held with bonfires and dances and the music of violin--have
been associated with love-making and the choice of a mate.[138] In spring,
the first Monday in Lent (Quadrigesima) and Easter Eve were frequent days
for such bonfires. In May, among the Franks of the Main, the unmarried
women, naked and adorned with flowers, danced on the Blocksberg before the
men, as described by Herbels in the tenth century.[139] In the central
highlands of Scotland the Beltane fires were kindled on the 1st of May.
Bonfires sometimes took place on Halloween (October 31st) and Christmas.
But the great season all over Europe for these bonfires, then often held
with erotic ceremonial, is the summer solstice, the 23d of June, the eve
of Midsummer, or St. John's Day.[140]

The Bohemians and other Slavonic races formerly had meetings with sexual
license. This was so up to the beginning of the sixteenth century on the
banks of rivers near Novgorod. The meetings took place, as a rule, the day
before the Festival of John the Baptist, which, in pagan times, was that
of a divinity known by the name of Jarilo (equivalent to Priapus). Half a
century later, a new ecclesiastical code sought to abolish every vestige
of the early festivals held on Christmas Day, on the Day of the Baptism,
of Our Lord, and on John the Baptist's Day. A general feature of all these
festivals (says Kowalewsky) was the prevalence of the promiscuous
intercourse of the sexes. Among the Ehstonians, at the end of the
eighteenth century, thousands of persons would gather around an old ruined
church (in the Fellinschen) on the Eve of St. John, light a bonfire, and
throw sacrificial gifts into it. Sterile women danced naked among the
ruins; much eating and drinking went on, while the young men and maidens
disappeared into the woods to do what they would. Festivals of this
character still take place at the end of June in some districts. Young
unmarried couples jump barefoot over large fires, usually near rivers or
ponds. Licentiousness is rare.[141] But in many parts of Russia the
peasants still attach little value to virginity, and even prefer women who
have been mothers. The population of the Grisons in the sixteenth century
held regular meetings not less licentious than those of the Cossacks.
These were abolished by law. Kowalewsky regards all such cus