St. John's Wort. 
*95 
of the strong superstitious feeling with which this noted day 
was formerly regarded. 
Miss Pratt, in one of her charming botanical works, alluding 
to the customs yet practised upon St. John’s Day, remarks 
that “ in Lorraine no persuasions will induce the peasant to 
cut down his grass until the arrival of this day, however the 
sun may have prepared it for the scythe; while it matters not 
that the season be retarded, no event is allowed to delay the 
commencement of haying at this period.” 
It is generally believed in the Levant that on the anniver¬ 
sary of this sacred day the plague will disappear from the 
country, and more than one sad disappointment has not served 
to eradicate the persuasion from the Greek mind. 
In many continental places rural festivities and customs, 
similar to those practised on Allhallow’s-eve by the Scotch, 
are celebrated on this day. So wide-spread and deep-rooted 
a superstition as is this undoubtedly points to a very ancient 
but common origin—one, indeed, far older than that supposed 
by Miss Pratt, who deems these practices were founded on a 
strange misapprehension of the Scriptural words which likened 
St. John to a burning and shining light. That lady, in support 
of her theory, instances the blazing bonfires which—like those 
of Baal—were formerly built upon the vigil of the saint, and 
round which danced youths and maidens, wreathed with ver¬ 
vain and St. John’s wort—as even were the Druidic worshippers 
of times long anterior—bunches of which symbolic flowers 
they flung into the flames, at the same time that they fer¬ 
vently invoked St. John, and besought Heaven to render the 
coming year more bountiful with good gifts, and more sparing 
of sorrows, than the one departing had been. “ In London,” 
Miss Pratt remarks, “ in addition to the bonfires, the festival 
was signified by every man’s door being shaded with green 
birch, long fennel, St. John’s wort, orpine, white lilies, and other 
typical plants, and ornamented with garlands of beautiful 
flowers.” 
Another remarkable quality ascribed to this plant by our 
ancestors was the power it possessed of curing all sorts of 
wounds, and in this belief, doubtless, originated its name of 
tutsan, an evident corruption of its French cognomen, la toute 
saine, or all-heal. The common perforated St. John’s wort was 
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