In the Bavarian highlands, where the mountain names are many of them of Sclavonic origin, and testify to a Sclavonic race having occupied the Alps, this is still customary. The midsummer dances, and the whirling of fiery wheels, are still in vogue. It is the same elsewhere. A writer on the customs of the Sclaves says: “They give each other a hand, and form a circle, whence the name of the dance, kolo = a circle, or wheel. They take three quick steps or leaps to the left, then a slow stride to the right; but when men alone dance it, after the three quick steps, they stand, and kick with the right leg into the middle of the circle. When the dance is accompanied by singing, one portion of the circle sings one strophe, and the other repeats it. The Sclave dance is most wild; and the same is found among the Carinthians and the Croats.”[43] In Dalmatia and Croatia, on St. Vitus’ Day the peasants dance, holding burning pieces of fragrant wood in their hands. In the reign of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, the Abbot Fulrad obtained the relics of St. Vitus, a boy-martyr, from Rome, and conveyed them to St. Denis. When the Abbey of New Corbey was founded in Saxony, Warin, the abbot, wrote to Hilduin of St. Denis, to entreat the gift of these relics for his church. Accordingly, in 836, they were conveyed to their new resting-place in Saxony. In 879, the monks of Corbey started on a mission to the Sclaves in Rügen and Pomerania, carrying with them a portion of the relics of St. Vitus. They erected a chapel in Rügen, which they dedicated to the saint. The attempt failed; and when, later, the Rugians were converted, the missionaries supposed that the Swanto Wit, whom they found them worshipping, was this very St. Vitus, in Sclave Swante Vit, whose relics had been laid in Rügen. When, in 1124, Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, laboured for the conversion of the Pomeranians, he took with him a figure of a cock and a silver arm that contained bones of St. Vitus. The Pomeranians reverenced the cock as a sacred being, and when Otto appeared before them, holding up the cock and the silver arm, they prostrated themselves to the cock, and he was gratified at having thus inveigled them into doing honour to the relics of St. Vitus. Saint Wenceslas, Prince of Bohemia, in 930 destroyed the temple of Swanto Wit at Prague, and erected on its site a church to Swante Vit, _i.e._, St. Vitus. When Ancona was besieged by the Christian host under Waldemar I., a prophecy circulated that the city would fall into their hands on St. Vitus’ Day. So it did, and Waldemar at once destroyed the temple of Swanto Wit in the city, and on its ruins erected a church to Swante Vit.