"On the 29th of June, men, and even babes, had to be passed through the fire. 'On this night,' says Dr. Moresin, 'did the Highlanders run about on the mountains and high grounds with lighted torches, like the Cicilian women of old, in search of Proserpine,' and Scotch farmers then used to go round their corn-fields with blazing torches, as was the custom at the Cerealia. The ancient Roman Kalendar states, among other matter, that fires are made on the 23rd; 'Boys dress in girls' clothes; waters are swum in during the night. Water is fetched in vessels and hung up for purposes of divination; fern is esteemed by the vulgar because of the seed...; girls gather thistles, and place a hundred crosses by the same;' for has not the thistle a cap like the lotus, and is it not a trefoil? "In the 'Englishwoman in Russia,' p. 223, a writer says that 'on midsummer eve a custom still (1855) exists in Russia, among the lower classes, that could only be derived from a very remote antiquity, and is perhaps a remnant of the worship of Baal. A party of peasant women and girls assemble in some retired unfrequented spot, and light a large fire, over which they leap in succession. If by chance one of the other sex should be found near the place, or should have seen them in the act of performing the rite, it is at the imminent hazard of his life, for the women would not scruple to sacrifice him for his temerity.' The writer was assured that such instances had often been known. Thus this 'Fire-dance' is a very serious matter, and one which under the circumstances, we can learn very little about: from its secret practice here by women it is clearly connected with Agni, the Procreator or Fertiliser. Our ancestors were inveterate fire-worshippers, especially at the four great solar festivals. They thought no cattle safe unless passed through the May Day and Midsummer Beltine fires, and no person would suffer a fire within their parish which had not been then kindled afresh from the Tin-Egin, or sacred fire produced by friction." The Medes were undoubtedly worshippers of Fire, "as the most subtle, ethereal, incomprehensible, and powerful agent. They were averse to all temples or personification of the material things, or of Ormazd. Like our Parsee fellow-subjects, they never allowed their hearth-fires to be extinguished, nor would they even blow out any ordinary fire or candle; in the Magian days, he who did so forfeited his life." "We still see the remains--some very perfect--of the lone Fire-towers, which Greeks called _Puraitheia_, amidst the lofty hills of Armenia, Azerbijan, Koordistan and Looristan, some of which were Dakmas, or 'Towers of Silence,' having gratings for roofs, through which the bones fell when the body was destroyed. The Fire-God was called _At-Ar_."