chers, wishing to defer to
the prejudices and usages of the people, "yet not so as to interfere
with the celebration of Easter at the vernal equinox, retained the
Bealtine ceremonial, only transferring it to the saint's day." Of these
fire festivals and their adoption by the Christian church Tylor says:

"The solar Christmas festival has its pendant at mid-summer. The summer
solstice was the great season of fire festivals throughout Europe on
the heights, of dancing round and leaping through the fires, of sending
blazing fire-wheels to roll down from the hills into the valleys,
in sign of the sun's descending course. These ancient rites attached
themselves in Christendom to St. John's Eve.

"It seems as though the same train of symbolism which had adapted the
mid-winter festival to the Nativity, may have suggested the dedication
of the mid-summer festival to John the Baptist, in clear allusion to his
words 'He must increase but I must decrease.' "(137)

137) Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii., p. 271.

In a description recently given of the "moral, religious, and social
disease" which broke out A.D. 1374, in the lower Rhine region, and which
was denominated as the "greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations of
possession," Andrew D. White says: "The immediate origin of these
manifestations seems to have been the wild revels of St. John's
Day."(138)

138) Pop. Science, vol. xxxv., p. 3.

Upon this subject Toland observes that he has seen the people of Ireland
running and leaping through the St. John's fire proud of passing through
it unsinged. Although ignorant of the origin of this ceremony, they
nevertheless regarded it as some kind of a lustration by means of which
they were to be specially blessed.

To every domestic hearth was carried the seed of Bealtine, or St. John's
fire, which during the year was not permitted to go out.(139)

139) Although the preservation of holy fire upon every hearth was
clearly a religious observance, still, as in those days there were
no matches, the material benefit to be derived from this precaution
doubtless had a significance apart from that connected with worship.

According to the testimony of Tylor, the festival of John the Baptist
was celebrated in Germany down to a late date. This writer quoting from
a low German book of the year 1859, refers to the "nod fire" which was
sawed out of wood to light the St. John's bonfire "through which the
people