that the employment of fire in this and kindred ceremonies may have been designed originally, not so much to stimulate growth and reproduction, as to burn and destroy all agencies, whether in the shape of vermin, witches, or what not, which threatened or were supposed to threaten the growth of the crops and the multiplication of animals. It is often difficult to decide between these two different interpretations of the use of fire in agricultural rites. In any case the fire-festival of Auvergne on the first Sunday in Lent may date from Druidical times. [French custom of carrying lighted torches (_brandons_) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent.] The custom of carrying lighted torches of straw (_brandons_) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent seems to have been common in France, whether it was accompanied with the practice of kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province of Picardy "on the first Sunday of Lent people carried torches through the fields, exorcising the field-mice, the darnel, and the smut. They imagined that they did much good to the gardens and caused the onions to grow large. Children ran about the fields, torch in hand, to make the land more fertile. All that was done habitually in Picardy, and the ceremony of the torches is not entirely forgotten, especially in the villages on both sides the Somme as far as Saint-Valery."[279] "A very agreeable spectacle, said the curate of l'Étoile, is to survey from the portal of the church, situated almost on the top of the mountain, the vast plains of Vimeux all illuminated by these wandering fires. The same pastime is observed at Poix, at Conty, and in all the villages round about."[280] Again, in the district of Beauce a festival of torches (_brandons_ or _brandelons_) used to be held both on the first and on the second Sunday in Lent; the first was called "the Great Torches" and the second "the Little Torches." The torches were, as usual, bundles of straw wrapt round poles. In the evening the village lads carried the burning brands through the country, running about in disorder and singing, "_Torches burn At these vines, at this wheat_; _Torches burn For the maidens that shall wed_!"