adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village swains go about in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be “Sweethearts of St. John” act as follows. The young man stands on one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to each other. Dancing and music go on till late at night.[1] The correspondence of these Sardinian pots of grain to the gardens of Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly placed in them answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.
This Sardinian custom is one of those midsummer customs, once celebrated in many parts of Europe, a chief feature of which is the great bonfire round which people dance and over which they leap. Examples of these customs have already been cited from Sweden and Bohemia.[2] These examples suffici-
- ↑ Antonio Bresciani, Dei costumi dell’ isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi popoli orientali (Rome and Turin, 1866), p. 427 sq.; R. Tennant, Sardinia and its Resources (Rome and London, 1885), p. 187; S. Gabriele, “Usi dei contadini della Sardegna,” Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888) p. 469 sq. Tennant says that the pots are kept in a dark warm place, and that the children leap across the fire.
- ↑ See ch. i. p. 78 sq.
