Page:The Science of Fairy Tales.djvu/263

 these days are ecclesiastical festivals; but perhaps the only one which has not superseded an ancient heathen feast is Good Friday. The policy of the Church, in consecrating to Christian uses as many as possible of the seasons and customs she found already honoured among the peoples she had conquered, seized upon their holy days and made them her own. And if the science of Folk-lore has taught us anything, it is that the observances on these converted holy days external to the rites demanded by the Church are relics of the ceremonies performed in pagan days to pagan deities. In none of these instances has the proof been more conclusive than in that of St. John's, or Midsummer Day. Grimm, first, with abundant learning, and more recently Mr. Frazer, with a wealth of illustration surpassing that of Grimm himself, and indeed inaccessible in his day, have shown that the Midsummer festival was kept in honour of the sun; that it consisted of the ceremonial kindling of fire, the gathering and use of floral garlands, the offering of human and other sacrifices, and the performance of sacred dances; and that its object was to increase the power of the sun by magical sympathy, to obtain a good harvest and fruitfulness of all creatures, and to purge the sins of the people. It was, in fact, the chief ceremony of the year among the European races.

Prominent among the remnants of these ceremonies continued down to modern days are the Midsummer bonfires. These were lighted on the tops of mountains, hills, or even barrows. This situation may be thought to have symbolic reference to the solstice; but probably a still more powerful reason for it was the already sacred character of such places. But we need hardly consider whether the ceremonies of which the bonfires are the remnant, were observed on the hill-tops and other high places because the latter were already sacred, or, conversely, the hill tops and other high places were held sacred because of the ceremonies enacted there; for in