June 23rd: Midsummer Eve/St John's Eve

Today is Midsummer Eve, also St John's Eve. Here are a few of the superstitions and customs associated with today.

1. If it rains on midsummer-eve, the filberts will be spoiled, according to a traditional English proverb.
2. Fairies are said to speak in human tongues on this night.
3. Fern seed gathered on this night was reputed to have the power to turn people invisible. Hemp seed sown at midnight by a single woman reciting "Hemp-seed I sow, hemp-seed I hoe, and he that is my true love come after me and mow" would bring her future husband to her. St John's Wort was also gathered to hang over doorways and windows to protect the residents from Witches and also to put in drinks to cure madness, sciatica, epilepsy and paralysis. Salve made from the herb cured wounds from spears and swords. St John's Wort is a proven anti-depressant, so there was some truth in it. Vervain, trefoil and rue were also believed to have magical properties and would be picked on this night.
4. In Ireland they used to believe that the souls of the living leave their bodies tonight, and wander to the place, by land or sea, where they will eventually die.
5. This might have been the origin of the custom of lighting bonfires and staying up all night to greet the rising Sun. People would jump through the fires, and set Fire to wheels and roll them down hills.
6. There were a lot of customs aimed at young women finding out who they were going to marry. In Britain, it was the custom for an unmarried woman to fast then lay out a cloth at midnight with Bread and Cheese. She'd sit down ready to eat, leaving the front door open. Her future husband would enter the room, salute her with a bow, then leave. Or, a more patient maiden would pick a sprig of St John’s wort and wear it in her bosom until Christmas, by which time the man who was to be her husband would see it and take it from her. Some of the customs were more social in nature with girls getting together and washing dresses, which they would place in front of the fire to dry; the likeness of their future husbands would come and turn the dresses and drink a toast to their future brides. Or they'd make a dumb cake. Two of them had to make it, two break it, and a third would put it under each of their pillows, all in complete silence, so the first two would dream of their future husbands. Or if baking wasn't their thing, they could dig up the root of the mugwort plant, and place it under their pillows for the same result. Or, they might hang up Midsummer Men, cuttings of a herb called orpin, in pairs, one representing them and one representing their sweetheart. If the springs leaned towards each other, their romance was well starred. If one withered, it foretold a death.
7. There is a legend in Stanton Drew, Somerset, UK, which says that once when Midsummer's Eve fell on a Saturday, there was a wedding, and the guests celebrated with gusto. At midnight, the fiddler declared he had to stop playing as it was now Sunday, the Lord's Day. The bride wanted to carry on celebrating and said she'd carry on dancing even if she had to go to Hell for a musician. At that moment, a gaily-dressed fiddler appeared, and readily agreed to play for them. Later, when they were exhausted and asked him to stop, he wouldn't - and they couldn't stop dancing, either. In the morning, there was no sign of the revellers in the field, but in their place was a stone circle. The stones are still there today.
8. In Germany, an old St John’s Eve custom is to place a wreath on the door of homes, because St John the Baptist walks through the streets tonight and bows to any home which has a wreath.
9. At Oxford, a sermon used to be preached from a stone pulpit in a corner of Magdalen College. The court was decked with green boughs so the preaching would resemble that of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness.
10. In the middle ages, about two thousand men would parade through the streets of London, wearing flowers and jewels. The watchmen, as they were called, carried tar-burning torches called cressets, and there'd be bonfires in the streets. Henry VIII banned the custom, probably afraid of a large crowd of armed men.