d ideas in their rustic breasts. At Kamenagora in
Croatia the herdsmen throw nine three-year old vines into the bonfire,
and when these burst into flames the young men who are candidates for
matrimony jump through the blaze. He who succeeds in leaping over the
fire without singeing himself will be married within the year. At
Vidovec in Croatia parties of two girls and one lad unite to kindle a
Midsummer bonfire and to leap through the flames; he or she who leaps
furthest will soonest wed. Afterwards lads and lasses dance in separate
rings, but the ring of lads bumps up against the ring of girls and
breaks it, and the girl who has to let go her neighbour's hand will
forsake her true love hereafter.[442] In Servia on Midsummer Eve
herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the sheepfolds and
cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow the torches to
burn out.[443]

[The Midsummer fires among the Magyars of Hungary.]

Among the Magyars in Hungary the midsummer fire-festival is marked by
the same features that meet us in so many parts of Europe. On Midsummer
Eve in many places it is customary to kindle bonfires on heights and to
leap over them, and from the manner in which the young people leap the
bystanders predict whether they will marry soon. At Nograd-Ludany the
young men and women, each carrying a truss of straw, repair to a meadow,
where they pile the straw in seven or twelve heaps and set it on fire.
Then they go round the fire singing, and hold a bunch of iron-wort in
the smoke, while they say, "No boil on my body, no sprain in my foot!"
This holding of the flowers over the flames is regarded, we are told, as
equally important with the practice of walking through the fire barefoot
and stamping it out. On this day also many Hungarian swineherds make
fire by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and through
the fire thus made they drive their pigs to preserve them from
sickness.[444] In villages on the Danube, where the population is a
cross between Magyar and German, the young men and maidens go to the
high banks of the river on Midsummer Eve; and while the girls post
themselves low down the slope, the lads on the height above set fire to
little wooden wheels and, after swinging them to and fro at the end of a
wand, send them whirling through the air to fall into the Danube. As he
does so, each lad sings out the name of his sweetheart, and she listens
well pleased down below.[44