[24] Mr. Métivier writes under the heading of “Lit de Fouaille.”--“Que de gens instruits, peu versés dans l’étude de notre Calendrier Champêtre, se sont imaginés que le lit de feuilles et de fleurs du solstice d’été--fête aussi ancienne que l’homme lui-même, n’était qu’un lit vert--une jonquière! L’apothéose de la beauté sur un trone de roses et de lys se retrouvait autrefois dans tous les climats, où le soleil favorisait la culture de ces trésors de Flore. Presque de nos jours, chaque canton de l’île élisait une tante ou cousine. Vouée au silence--‘La Môme;’ et cette bonne parente recevait de toute la compagnie l’hommage d’un baiser--c’est une allusion au silence de l’astre du jour et à la naissance d’Harpocrate, le doigt sur la bouche, au milieu d’un carreau de vives fleurs.” [25] EDITOR’S NOTES. By the courtesy of Mr. J. Linwood Pitts I am able to insert the following note, showing the gradual decadence of the old custom. “Some sixty or seventy years ago, a Mr. and Mrs. Le Maître kept a public-house at Le Cognon, near St. Sampson’s. At the summer vraicking time, they used to deck the green bed with elaborate floral decorations--a veritable “Lleit de feuilles.” A plate was placed in the centre of the bed to receive contributions. The young people used to go there and dance in the evenings after vraicking, Mr. Le Maître playing the fiddle for the dancers. Mrs. Robin (now seventy-three years old) danced there as a girl.” Stow in his “Survey” tells us “that on the vigil of St. John Baptist every man’s door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John’s wort, orpin, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass.…” In Brand’s _Popular Antiquities of Great Britain_, Vol. I. p. 190, it is said:--“Hutchinson mentions another custom used on this day; it is to dress out stools with a cushion of flowers. A layer of clay is placed on the stool, and therein is stuck with great regularity, an arrangement of all kinds of flowers, so close as to form a beautiful cushion. These are exhibited at the doors of houses in the villages, and at the ends of streets and cross lanes of larger towns, where the attendants beg money from passengers to enable them to have an evening feast and dancing.” He adds “This custom is evidently derived from the Ludi Compitalii of the Romans; this appellation is taken from the Compita or Cross Lanes, where they were instituted and celebrated by the multitude assembled before the building of Rome. It was the Feast of Lares, or Household Gods, who presided as well over houses as streets. This mode of adorning the seat or couch of the Lares was beautiful, and the idea of reposing them on aromatic flowers, and beds of roses, was excellent.” Midsummer Day in Sark.