Note 24 — Chapter I · THE DANCING MANIA IN GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS.

What took place at the St. John’s fires in the middle ages (about 1280) we learn by a communication from the Bishop Guil. Durantes of Aquitania (Rationale divinorum officiorum. L. VII. c. 26. In Reiske, loc. cit. p. 77.) Bones, horns, and other rubbish, were heaped together to be consumed in smoke, while persons of all ages danced round the flames as if they had been possessed, in the same way as at the Palilia, an ancient Roman lustration by fire, whereat those who took part in them, sprang through a fire made of straw. (Ovid. Met. XIV. 774. Fast. IV. 721.) Others seized burning flambeaux, and made a circuit of the fields, in the supposition that they thereby screened them from danger, while others, again, turned a cart wheel, to represent the retrograde movement of the sun.