Thus the
Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's day an ancient
heathen usage, the kindling of the "Nodfyr," which was forbidden
them by St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present
day that people and animals that have leaped through these flames,
or their smoke, are protected for a whole year from fevers and
other diseases, as if by a kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian
dances, which have originated in similar causes among all the rude
nations of the earth, and the wild extravagancies of a heated
imagination, were the constant accompaniments of this half-
heathen, half-Christian festival. At the period of which we are
treating, however, the Germans were not the only people who gave
way to the ebullitions of fanaticism in keeping the festival of
St. John the Baptist. Similar customs were also to be found among
the nations of Southern Europe and of Asia, and it is more than
probable that the Greeks transferred to the festival of John the
Baptist, who is also held in high esteem among the Mahomedans, a
part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an absurdity of a kind which
is but too frequently met with in human affairs. How far a
remembrance of the history of St.
Pages:
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136