In Greece the women light fires on St. John’s Eve and jump over them crying, “I leave my sins behind me.”(714) Italy must also have had its midsummer bonfires, since at Orvieto they were specially excepted from the prohibition directed against bonfires in general.(715) We have seen that they are still lighted in Sardinia.(716) In Corsica on the Eve of St. John the people set fire to the trunk of a tree or to a whole tree, and the young men and maidens dance round the blaze, which is called _fucaraja_.(717) Midsummer fires are, or were formerly, lighted in Spain.(718) Even the Mohammedans of Algeria and Morocco are reported to have kindled great midsummer bonfires of straw, into which they kept throwing incense and spices the whole night, invoking the divine blessing on their fruit-trees.(719) It remains to show that the burning of effigies of human beings in the midsummer fires was not uncommon. At Rottenburg in Würtemberg, down to the beginning of the present century, a ceremony was observed on Midsummer Day which was called “beheading the angel-man.” A stump was driven into the ground, wrapt with straw, and fashioned into the rude likeness of a human figure, with arms, head, and face. This was the angel-man; round about him wood was piled up. The boys, armed with swords, assembled in crowds, covered the figure completely over with flowers, and eagerly awaited the signal. When the pile of wood was fired and the angel-man burst into a blaze, the word was given and all the boys fell upon him with their swords and hewed the burning figure in pieces. Then they leaped backwards and forwards over the fire.(720) In some parts of the Tyrol a straw-man is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and then burned. He is called the _Lotter_, which has been corrupted into Luther.(721) In French Flanders down to 1789 a straw figure representing a man was always burned in the midsummer bonfire, and the figure of a woman was burned on St. Peter’s Day, 29th June.(722) At Grätz on the 23d June the common people used to make a puppet called the _Tatermann_, which they dragged to the bleaching-ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire.(723) In some parts of Russia a figure of Kupalo is burned or thrown into a stream on St. John’s Night.(724) The Russian custom of carrying the straw effigy of Kupalo over the midsummer bonfire has been already described.(725)