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EASTEE FIEES. 617
Almost everywhere during the last hundred years the feeble
ness of governments has deprived the people of their Easter fires
(see Suppl.). 1
MIDSUMMER FIRES. 2 In our older speech, the most festive
season of the year, when the sun has reached his greatest height
and must thence decline again, is named sunewende = sunnewende
(sun s wending, solstice), commonly in the plural, because this
high position of the sun lasts several days: ze einen sunewenden/
f
zen nsehsten sunewenden/ Nib. 1424, 4. Wigal. 1717;
Nib. 32, 4 ;
1
vor disen sunewenden/ Nib. 678, 3. 694, 3 ; ze sunewenden/
Trist. 5987 (the true reading comes out in Groot s variants) ;
sunewenden abent/ Nib. 1754, 1 ;
an
( 3
nach sunewenden/ Iw. 2941.
Now, as Midsummer or St. John s day (June 24), sant Johans
sunewenden tac/ Ls. 2, 708, coincides with this,, the fires in
question are called in Up. German documents of the 14- 15th
century sunwentfeuer, sunbentfewr,* and even now among the
Austrian and Bavarian peasantry sunawetsfoir, sunwentsfeuer.
H. Sachs 1, 423d : auch schiirn die bubn (lads poke) sunwent
At this season were held great gatherings of the : people
feuer.
die nativitatis S. Johannis baptistae in conventu populi maximo
(Pertz 2, 386) ; this was in 860. In 801 Charles the Great kept
this festival at Eporedia, now Ivrea (Pertz 1, 190. 223) ; and
Lewis the Pious held assemblies of the Empire on the same day
in 824 and 831. Descriptions of Midsummer fires agree with
those of Easter fires, with of course some divergences. At
Gernsheim in the Mentz country, the fire when lighted is blessed
by the priest, and there is singing and prayer so long as it burns ;
when the flame goes out, the children jump over the glimmering
coals ; formerly grown-up people did the same. In Superst. I,
1
Judic. inquiry resp. the Easter fire burned, contr. to prohib., on the Kogeln-
berg near Volkmarsen, Apr. 9, 1833, see Niederhess. wochenbl. 1834, p. 2229 a .
The older prohibitions allege the unchristian character, later ones the waste of
timber. Even bonfires for a victory were very near being suppressed.
* The best treatise is : Franc. Const, de Khautz de ritu ignis in natali S.
Johannis bapt. accensi, Vindob. 1759, 8vo.
3 All the good MSS. have, not sunnewende, but sunewende, which can only
stand for sunwende, formed like suntac. We also find zu sungihten, Scheffer s
and allows us to
Haltaus, pp. 109, 110 ; gilit here corresp. to Goth, gahts (gressus),
guess an OHG. sunnagaht.
4 Hahn s Monum. 2, 693. Sutner s Berichtigungen, Miinch. 1797, p. 107 (an.
1401).