PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 99 



effigy is burnt on Shrove Tuesday ; the people dance 

 round the pyre and the last bride must leap over it. 

 In Lechrain a young man and a young woman leap 

 together over the bonfire on Midsummer Day. If 

 they escape unsmirched, the man will not suffer from 

 fever, and the girl will not become a mother within 

 the year the flames will not have touched and 

 fertilised her. In Ireland barren cattle are driven 

 through the midsummer fires ; and a girl who jumps 

 thrice over it will soon marry and become the mother of 

 many children. In various parts of France a girl who 

 dances round nine fires will be sure to marry within 

 the year. While in some parts of France and Belgium 

 it is the rule that the bonfires usual on the first Sunday 

 of Lent should be kindled by the person who was last 

 married. 1 The relation of these beliefs and practices 

 to those which exhibit bonfires as quickening and 

 fertilising influences over the vegetable world is clear. 

 For details reference must be made to the pages of 

 The Golden Bough. 



The specific manner, however, in which the fires 

 were supposed to work their beneficent purpose is a 

 subject of conjecture rather than of absolute proof. 

 It has been suggested that it was by purification. 

 The fumigation which human beings and cattle would 

 undergo in passing through or over the fire, and which 

 would be conveyed to the fields and fruit-trees by the 

 flames and smoke of the fire and of the torches lighted 

 at its glowing embers, would drive away evil influences. 

 That this idea in fact enters into some of the celebra- 

 tions is clear, if not expressly affirmed by those who 

 indulge in them. But it by no means accounts for all 

 1 Frazer, G. B. iii. 244, 270, 305, 314. 



