toms as a
survival of early forms of promiscuity.[142]

Frazer (_Golden Bough_, 2d ed., 1900, vol. iii, pp. 236-350)
fully describes and discusses the dances, bonfires and festivals
of spring and summer, of Halloween (October 31), and Christmas.
He also explains the sexual character of these festivals. "There
are clear indications," he observes (p. 305), "that even human
fecundity is supposed to be promoted by the genial heat of the
fires. It is an Irish belief that a girl who jumps thrice over
the midsummer bonfire will soon marry and become the mother of
many children; and in various parts of France they think that if
a girl dances round nine fires she will be sure to marry within a
year. On the other hand, in Lechrain, people say that if a young
man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire together, escape
unsmirched, the young woman will not become a mother within
twelve months--the flames have not touched and fertilized her.
The rule observed in some parts of France and Belgium, that the
bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent should be kindled by the
person who was last married, seems to belong to the same class of
ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive
from, or impart to, the fire a generative and fertilizing
influence. The common practice of lovers leaping over the fires
hand-in-hand may very well have originated in a notion that
thereby their marriage would be more likely to be blessed with
offspring. And the scenes of profligacy which appear to have
marked the midsummer celebration among the Ehstonians, as they
once marked the celebration of May Day among ourselves, may have
sprung, not from the mere license of holiday-makers, but from a
crude notion that such orgies were justified, if not required, by
some mysterious bond which linked the life of man, to the courses
of the heavens at the turning-point of the year."

As regards these primitive festivals, although the evidence is scattered
and sometimes obscure, certain main conclusions clearly emerge. In early
Europe there were, according to Grimm, only two seasons, sometimes
regarded as spring and winter, sometimes as spring and autumn, and for
mythical purposes these seasons were alone available.[143] The appearance
of each of these two seasons was inaugurated by festivals which were
religious and often erotic in charac