ended in
scenes of debauchery which looked doubly hideous by the growing light of
a summer morning.[448]

[The Midsummer fires among the Finns and Cheremiss of Russia.]

Still farther north, among a people of the same Turanian stock, we learn
from an eye-witness that Midsummer Night used to witness a sort of
witches' sabbath on the top of every hill in Finland. The bonfire was
made by setting up four tall birches in a square and piling the
intermediate space with fuel. Round the roaring flames the people sang
and drank and gambolled in the usual way.[449] Farther east, in the
valley of the Volga, the Cheremiss celebrate about midsummer a festival
which Haxthausen regarded as identical with the midsummer ceremonies of
the rest of Europe. A sacred tree in the forest, generally a tall and
solitary oak, marks the scene of the solemnity. All the males assemble
there, but no woman may be present. A heathen priest lights seven fires
in a row from north-west to south-east; cattle are sacrificed and their
blood poured in the fires, each of which is dedicated to a separate
deity. Afterwards the holy tree is illumined by lighted candles placed
on its branches; the people fall on their knees and with faces bowed to
the earth pray that God would be pleased to bless them, their children,
their cattle, and their bees, grant them success in trade, in travel,
and in the chase, enable them to pay the Czar's taxes, and so
forth.[450]

[The Midsummer fires in France; Bossuet on the Midsummer festival.]

When we pass from the east to the west of Europe we still find the
summer solstice celebrated with rites of the same general character.
Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the custom of
lighting bonfires at midsummer prevailed so commonly in France that
there was hardly a town or a village, we are told, where they were not
kindled.[451] Though the pagan origin of the custom may be regarded as
certain, the Catholic Church threw a Christian cloak over it by boldly
declaring that the bonfires were lit in token of the general rejoicing
at the birth of the Baptist, who opportunely came into the world at the
solstice of summer, just as his greater successor did at the solstice of
winter; so that the whole year might be said to revolve on the golden
hinges of these two great birthdays.[452] Writing in the seventeenth
century Bishop Bossuet expressly affirms this edifying theory of the
Midsummer bonfires, and he tells his catech