Midsummer Eve - St John's Eve

The astronomical solstice may have been two days ago, but the customary day for beginning midsummer celebrations throughout Europe was the 23rd of June. In England 'midsummer' seems to have been, more broadly, the time between St John's Eve and St Peter's Day on the 29th.

The customs associated with this time can be divided into four: love divinations; fire and lights; garlands and greenery; and civic processions. One particularly attractive type of love divination is the use of the wildflower orpine. What you do is cut two 'slips' of the plant and arrange them as a pair, then leave them overnight (in certain parts of the country, according to Steve Roud's The English Year they were arranged in the rafters). If in the morning they incline towards each other, it's love. If they bend away from each other it's aversion. If they wither, then it's death I'm afraid. They were also known as 'midsummer men'.

Both Roud and Ronald Hutton (in Seasons of the Sun) point out the importance of John Stow's description of midsummer celebrations in 1590s London. He gives a good description of the content of the garlands and boughs decorating houses (they were also used in churches): green birch, long fennel, St John's Wort, orpine, white lilies and any other flowers.

Stow also described the lighting of bonfires, during celebrations which brought communities together and which could be used for the reconciling of differences and for purifying the air. The use of fire to purify air has a particularly long history and as Hutton points out, this time of the year is when such rituals seem particularly necessary as communities passed into the season when crop blights and human diseases became more prevalent. It may also be that the midsummer bonfires represented a continuity of ritual from pre-Christian Europe up to the Early Modern period. The blazing wheels described in early sources from the continent and medieval British accounts fit nicely with sun symbolism at this time of year. More convincing in any case than the 'Druidic' rites dreamt up by fanciful antiquarians!

The final set of English customs associated with midsummer consists of civic parades held on the 24th of June and on St Peter's Eve, a show of pride and strength by local 'watches' and guilds. Roud describes these torch-lit parades 'with giants, devils, hobby horses, drummers, trumpeters, armed mounted and marching companies, and tableaux depicting famous scenes.' (p. 303) I never knew before that John the Baptist was the patron saint of tailors ('Any colour, sir, so long as it's hair') - and the tailors guild clothed the giant statues in several cities, including Salisbury.

The recurring theme you come across when reading about England's medieval customs is the great brick wall of the Reformation, which represented a revolution in public ritual and custom. This phenomenon is summed up pretty well by Hutton in his account of the midsummer parades and why these municipal pageants found the post-Reformation atmosphere so hostile:

[The pageants] were associated with the feasts of saints, howbeit important, and scriptural, figures. The notion of magical properties associated with the fires [...] was obnoxious to reformers already set on getting rid of holy water, ashes, candles and 'palm crosses'. Furthermore, the regular assembly of large numbers of armed citizens was disquieting to governments who feared rebellion against the religious changes which they were trying to impose. (p. 315)

The processions were pretty much finished off by this zeal and they steadily vanished between 1540 and 1640. Now, all midsummer seems to call up is hippies at Stonehenge and doing Shakespeare at school. Ignoring Shakespearean and 'druidic' dramas, if the weather's as nice tomorrow evening as it is tonight, you could recall the fire rituals by hanging lamps (maybe ones you've crocheted yourself!) outside and have a drink or two. And gather or buy a nice garland of flowers for someone (or yourself)...