have lasted into the first quarter of the nineteenth century;
the fires were lit in the villages and on the tops of high hills, and
the people sported and danced round them.[501] Moreover, the villagers
used to run with burning brands round their fields and to snatch ashes
from a neighbour's fire, saying as they did so, "We have the flower (or
flour) of the wake."[502] At Sandhill bonfires were kindled on the Eve
of St. Peter as well as on Midsummer Eve; the custom is attested for the
year 1575, when it was described as ancient.[503] We are told that "on
Midsummer's eve, reckoned according to the old style, it was formerly
the custom of the inhabitants, young and old, not only of Whalton, but
of most of the adjacent villages, to collect a large cartload of whins
and other combustible materials, which was dragged by them with great
rejoicing (a fiddler being seated on the top of the cart) into the
village and erected into a pile. The people from the surrounding country
assembled towards evening, when it was set on fire; and whilst the young
danced around it, the elders looked on smoking their pipes and drinking
their beer, until it was consumed. There can be little doubt that this
curious old custom dates from a very remote antiquity." In a law-suit,
which was tried in 1878, the rector of Whalton gave evidence of the
constant use of the village green for the ceremony since 1843. "The
bonfire," he said, "was lighted a little to the north-east of the well
at Whalton, and partly on the footpath, and people danced round it and
jumped through it. That was never interrupted." The Rev. G.R. Hall,
writing in 1879, says that "the fire festivals or bonfires of the summer
solstice at the Old Midsummer until recently were commemorated on
Christenburg Crags and elsewhere by leaping through and dancing round
the fires, as those who have been present have told me."[504] Down to
the early part of the nineteenth century bonfires called Beal-fires used
to be lit on Midsummer Eve all over the wolds in the East Riding of
Yorkshire.[505]

[The Midsummer fires in Herefordshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, and
Cornwall; the Cornish fires on Midsummer Eve and St. Peter's Eve.]

In Herefordshire and Somersetshire the peasants used to make fires in
the fields on Midsummer Eve "to bless the apples."[506] In Devonshire
the custom of leaping over the midsummer fires was also observed.[507]
"In Cornwall, the festival fires, called bonfires, are kindl