Seven winters in Rome
have convinced me of the correctness of their rule. Of course, you do
not believe me or them; but it would be better for you, if you
did,--and for me, too, when I come to visit you.
But I must beg pardon for all this advice; and as my business is not to
write a medical thesis here, let me return to pleasanter things.
Scarcely does the sun drop behind St. Peter's on the first day of May,
before bonfires begin to blaze from all the country towns on the
mountain-sides, showing like great beacons. This is a custom founded in
great antiquity, and common to the North and South. The first of May is
the Festival of the Holy Apostles in Italy; but in Germany, and still
farther north, in Sweden and Norway, it is _Walpurgisnacht_,--when
goblins, witches, hags, and devils hold high holiday, mounting on their
brooms for the Brocken. And it was on this night that Mephistopheles
carried Faust on his wondrous ride, and showed him the spectre of
Margaret with the red line round her throat. Miss Bremer, in her "Life
in Dalecarlia," gives the following account of the origin of this
custom:--"It is so old," she says, "that there is no perfect certainty
either of its origin or signification. It is, however, believed that it
derives its origin from a heathen sacrificatory festival; and there is
ground for the acceptation that children were sacrificed alive at this
very feast,--and this, in fact, in order to expel or reconcile the evil
spirits, of whom the people believed, that, partly flying, partly
riding, they commenced their passages over fields and woods at the
beginning of spring, and which are to this day called enchanters,
witches, nymphs, and so forth.
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