Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/579

566 seems bright in reflection after it has ceased to appear so to the direct gaze; and we watch its sunset lights quite out, and stay for stars below us before we draw to bank. This year we shall have something better than a moonlight walk home. On no other night perhaps could we have anything better than a bright moon chequering the woodland park with dark shadows and white gleams; but on the shortest night we like to observe how short it is. By the tender twilight we thread our way through the copses, and when we come to our own lawn we linger and listen to the owls from their hollow tree, and start at the bats as they flit by us, and hear midnight strike from the church steeple, and observe how faint the stars are, though the moon is far away. This year the moon will be only two days old, and those must be good eyes which will have seen her at all, immediately following the sun. Wherever we look among the dwellings of our neighbours, we discover scarcely any yellow earthly lights. There are none, except in cottages where there is a young infant, or where some nursing of the sick is going on. There is no need of lamps when there is really no night.

Last June we were more than half seduced into a plan for going, some year before long, to the North Cape, or to Tornea at least, to see the sun at midnight. I dare say I shall be reminded of this on the 21st, and I shall not say that we will never go. It may be true, as some friends will be sure to tell us, that the spectacle is “just what you might expect,” as I have known a man say about the Pyramids of Egypt, which took me more thoroughly by surprise than any other of the wonders of the world that I have seen. It may be true, that we can imagine at home every feature of the scene. It may also be true, as our Arctic voyagers tell us, that to people from our zone the sensation of perpetual daylight is fatiguing and unpleasant, so that it becomes almost an illness to the mariner to see the sunshine upon the sails at all hours, while he is longing for darkness and the refreshment of the sleep which belongs to darkness. But still I should like, as my children would, to see for once the unique light of an Arctic midsummer midnight on hills, and sea, and islands. It may be easy to imagine the sun declining to the horizon, and then beginning to travel upwards again; but the precise quality of the light, and the singularity of the sensation, can no more be known at home than the emotion belonging to seeing the green lapse of Niagara into its cauldron, or the blue sharp-cut angles of the shady side of the Pyramids, discerned from fifty miles off. So I should not wonder if we find ourselves on the summit of some Norwegian hill, or the rocky crest of some North Sea island, on some longest day, instead of on our own lawn or the squire’s mere.

If we want to see yellow earthly fires on such a night, we may step over to Ireland for Midsummer Eve. Now and then we hear reports of observances of St. John’s Eve by fires and rites of heathenish aspect in remote parts of England; but Ireland is lighted up by this torch of superstition over whole districts. There lakes reflect the glare of bonfires from mountain-tops, where black groups round the flame answer to the black boats and rowers on the red and yellow waters below. From the mountain-tops the valleys seem to be alight throughout their length; torches are carried from farm to farm, and children are handed through the flames, as if they were little heathens, being “passed through the fire to Moloch.” It is exactly so. The practice is a remnant of Baal worship, permitted by the Romish Church because it could not be extirpated; so the people talk of St. John the Baptist and “Beal” in conjunction, and make charms of St. John’s wort, and suppose the whole thing very Christian.

We are told, that in Cornwall a tall pole, with a bunch of flowers at the top, is set up and kindled on Midsummer Eve; and that in Gloucestershire the superstition lingers in many by-places; and I see by a “Guide to the Lakes” that the same practice is in full operation in that district, under the name of “the Need Fire.” This fire is kindled by rubbing two sticks together, and igniting heaps of rubbish so laid as to produce the greatest quantity of smoke. People come from all the farms round, to kindle torches, and set light to their own piles, in order to drive their cattle through, and thus get rid of “the distemper.” An old Cumberland farmer is said to have driven his wife through after the beasts, saying that he should then be safe from all distempers!

All this sounds very hot and smoky for such a season. It is pleasant to turn to the thought of cool vegetables and fruit, of lettuce and cold lamb, of cucumbers, cherries, and strawberries. Strawberries and cream are welcome morning, noon, and night. We in the country are better off than the Londoners, with their grand resource of ice-creams in the glaring afternoons, and at the dinners which busy men are too much exhausted to enjoy, after long mornings in counting-houses, or the law courts, or the committee-rooms of Parliament. The early mornings are pleasant in London, however, when the sun-blinds are down, and the streets are watered, and flower-girls are displaying their treasures in every street. The evenings are pleasant, too, in the parks, where the noble trees show their stately and graceful forms, and the water looks cool, and the aquatic birds are dabbling and splashing. At night there is a scent of hay from afar, perceptible even in Regent Street, not at all to the delight of such citizens as are subject to “the hay-fever.” Those who are under this liability hasten, at any inconvenience, to Brighton, or any seaside place where no meadow-grass is near.

We hear nothing of any such malady in our part of the country; and not for all the sights at Kew or Chiswick would we give up the sound of the whetting of the scythe in the early morning, or the scent which pervades our dwellings as the dew rises.

The last great treat of the month is the haymaking. Some sad foreboding attends it now. The scythe is more and more superseded by the haymaking machines, which cut the grass and dry it in a day. Even this new and most laudable economy seems likely to grow more rare with the advance of civilisation; for farmers are now discovering that the most wasteful use they can make of their grass is to keep it for hay. They