Note 69 — June 23.] MIDSUMMER EVE—St. JOHN’S EVE.

Fuller (Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, 1858, p. 25) says he has met with “two etymologies of bone-fires. Some deduce it from fires made of bones, relating it to the burning of martyrs, first made fashionable in England in the reign of King Henry the Fourth; but others derive the word from boon, that is, good, and fires.” The more probable explanation seems to be that of Dr. Hickes, and which has been adopted by Lye in the Etymologicon of Junius, namely, that it was derived from the Anglo-Saxon bælfyr, a burning pile, by the change of a single letter only, baal in the Islandic signifying a conflagration.