Note (return) — Chapter IV

The custom of carrying lighted torches of straw (brandons) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent seems to have been common in France, whether it was accompanied with the practice of kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province of Picardy "on the first Sunday of Lent people carried torches through the fields, exorcising the field-mice, the darnel, and the smut. They imagined that they did much good to the gardens and caused the onions to grow large. Children ran about the fields, torch in hand, to make the land more fertile. All that was done habitually in Picardy, and the ceremony of the torches is not entirely forgotten, especially in the villages on both sides the Somme as far as Saint-Valery."279 "A very agreeable spectacle, said the curate of l'Étoile, is to survey from the portal of the church, situated almost on the top of the mountain, the vast plains of Vimeux all illuminated by these wandering fires. The same pastime is observed at Poix, at Conty, and in all the villages round about."280 Again, in the district of Beauce a festival of torches (brandons or brandelons) used to be held both on the first and on the second Sunday in Lent; the first was called "the Great Torches" and the second "the Little Torches." The torches were, as usual, bundles of straw wrapt round poles. In the evening the village lads carried the burning brands through the country, running about in disorder and singing,