before sunrise they are fitted to heal many ailments. People buy them emulously to give away in presents and to fill the house with.”(121) On the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve), before sunset, the peasants of Perche still gather the herb called St. John’s herb. It is a creeping plant, very aromatic, with small flowers of a violet blue. Other scented flowers are added, and out of the posies they make floral crosses and crowns, which they hang up over the doors of houses and stables. Such floral decorations are sold like the box-wood on Palm Sunday, and the withered wreaths are kept from year to year. If an animal dies, it may be a cow, they carefully clean the byre or the stable, make a pile of these faded garlands, and set them on fire, having previously closed up all the openings and interstices, so that the whole place is thoroughly fumigated. This is thought to eradicate the germs of disease from the byre or stable.(122) At Nellingen, near Saaralben, in Lorraine the hedge doctors collect their store of simples between eleven o’clock and noon on Midsummer Day; and on that day nut-water is brewed from nuts that have been picked on the stroke of noon. Such water is a panacea for all ailments.(123) In the Vosges Mountains they say that wizards have but one day in the year, and but one hour in that day, to find and cull the baleful herbs which they use in their black art. That day is the Eve of St. John, and that hour is the time when the church bells are ringing the noonday Angelus. Hence in many villages they say that the bells ought not to ring at noon on that day.(124)