A correspondent of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for February, 1795, writing from Skye, gives us:--"Curious fact relating to the worship of Baal in Ireland. The Irish have ever been worshippers of fire, and of Baal, and are so to this day. The chief festival in honour of the sun and fire, is upon the twenty-first of June, when the sun arrives at the Summer Solstice, or rather begins its retrograde movement. I was so fortunate, in the summer of 1782, as to have my curiosity gratified by a sight of this ceremony over a very great extent of country. At the house where I was entertained, it was told me that we should see at midnight the most singular sight in Ireland, which was the lighting of Fires in honour of the Sun. Accordingly, exactly at midnight, the Fires began to appear; and taking the advantage of going up to the leads of the house, which had a widely-extended view, I saw on a radius of thirty miles, all around, the Fires burning on every eminence which the country afforded. I had a farther satisfaction, in learning from undoubted authority, that the people danced round the Fires, and at the close went through these Fires, and made their sons and daughters, together with their cattle, pass through the Fire; and the whole was conducted with religious solemnity. This account is exceedingly curious, and though I forbear the mention of names, I can venture to assure you that it is authentic." The remarks of Borlase in his "Antiquities of Cornwall," come in here very suitably. He says--"Of the fires we kindle in many parts of England, at some stated time of the year, we know not certainly the rise, reason or occasion, but they may probably be reckoned among the relicks of the Druid superstitious fires. In Cornwall, the festival fires called Bonfires, are kindled on the Eve of St. John the Baptist and St. Peter's Day; and Midsummer is thence, in the Cornish tongue, called 'Golnan,' which signifies both light and rejoicing. At these fires the Cornish attend with lighted torches, tarred and pitched at the end, and make their perambulations round their fires, and go from village to village carrying their torches before them, and this is certainly the remains of the Druid superstition, for 'faces præferre,' to carry lighted torches, was reckoned a kind of Gentilism, and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils. They were in the eye of the law '_accensores facularum_,' and thought to sacrifice to the devil, and to deserve capital punishment." Brand mentions a few additional particulars which we here transcribe. "Torreblanca, in his 'Demonology,' has a passage in which he tells us how the ancients were accustomed to pass their children of both sexes through the fire for the sake of securing them a prosperous and fortunate lot, and he adds that the Germans imitated this profane usage in their Midsummer pyres in honour of the anniversary of St. John's Day.