ch next morning before sunrise were fastened over the door of
the chief cattle-shed.[481] A similar custom prevailed in the
neighbouring department of Deux-Sevres; but here it was the priest who
kindled the bonfire, and old men used to put embers of the fire in their
wooden shoes as a preservative against many evils.[482] In some towns
and villages of Saintonge and Aunis, provinces of Western France now
mostly comprised in the department of Charente Inferieure, the fires of
St. John are still kindled on Midsummer Eve, but the custom is neither
so common nor carried out with so much pomp and ceremony as formerly.
Great quantities of wood used to be piled on an open space round about a
huge post or a tree stripped of its leaves and branches. Every one took
care to contribute a faggot to the pile, and the whole population
marched to the spot in procession with the crucifix at their head and
the priest bringing up the rear. The squire, or other person of high
degree, put the torch to the pyre, and the priest blessed it. In the
southern and eastern parts of Saintonge children and cattle were passed
through the smoke of the bonfires to preserve them from contagious
diseases, and when the fire had gone out the people scuffled for the
charred fragments of the great post, which they regarded as talismans
against thunder. Next morning, on Midsummer Day, every shepherdess in
the neighbourhood was up very early, for the first to drive her sheep
over the blackened cinders and ashes of the great bonfire was sure to
have the best flock all that year. Where the shepherds shrunk from
driving their flocks through the smoke and flames of the bonfire they
contented themselves with marking the hinder-quarters of the animals
with a broom which had been blackened in the ashes.[483]

[The Midsummer fires in Southern France; Midsummer festival of fire and
water in Provence; bathing in the sea at Midsummer; temporary Midsummer
kings at Aix and Marseilles.]

In the mountainous part of Comminges, a province of Southern France, now
comprised in the department of Haute Garonne, the midsummer fire is made
by splitting open the trunk of a tall tree, stuffing the crevice with
shavings, and igniting the whole. A garland of flowers is fastened to
the top of the tree, and at the moment when the fire is lighted the man
who was last married has to climb up a ladder and bring the flowers
down. In the flat parts of the same district the materials of the
mids