(M42) Sometimes Bohemian damsels make a different use of their midsummer garlands twined of nine sorts of flowers. They lie down with the garland laid as a pillow under their right ear, and a hollow voice, swooning from underground, proclaims their destiny.(150) Yet another mode of consulting the oracle by means of these same garlands is to throw them backwards and in silence upon a tree at the hour of noon, just when the flowers have been gathered. For every time that the wreath is thrown without sticking to the branches of the tree the girl will have a year to wait before she weds. This mode of divination is practised in Voigtland,(151) East Prussia,(152) Silesia,(153) Belgium,(154) and Wales,(155) and the same thing is done in Masuren, although we are not told that there the wreaths must be composed of nine sorts of flowers.(156) However, in Masuren chaplets of nine kinds of herbs are gathered on St. John’s Eve and put to a more prosaic use than that of presaging the course of true love. They are carefully preserved, and the people brew a sort of tea from them, which they administer as a remedy for many ailments; or they keep the chaplets under their pillows till they are dry, and thereupon dose their sick cattle with them.(157) In Esthonia the virtues popularly ascribed to wreaths of this sort are many and various. These wreaths, composed of nine kinds of herbs culled on the Eve or the Day of St. John, are sometimes inserted in the roof or hung up on the walls of the house, and each of them receives the name of one of the inmates. If the plants which have been thus dedicated to a girl happen to take root and grow in the chinks and crannies, she will soon wed; if they have been dedicated to an older person and wither away, that person will die. The people also give them as medicine to cattle at the time when the animals are driven forth to pasture; or they fumigate the beasts with the smoke of the herbs, which are burnt along with shavings from the wooden threshold. Bunches of the plants are also hung about the house to keep off evil spirits, and maidens lay them under their pillows to dream on.(158) In Sweden the “Midsummer Brooms,” made up of nine sorts of flowers gathered on Midsummer Eve, are put to nearly the same uses. Fathers of families hang up such “brooms” to the rafters, one for each inmate of the house; and he or she whose broom (_quast_) is the first to wither will be the first to die. Girls also dream of their future husbands with these bunches of flowers under their pillows. A decoction made from the flowers is, moreover, a panacea for all disorders, and if a bunch of them be hung up in the cattle shed, the Troll cannot enter to bewitch the beasts.(159) The Germans of Moravia think that nine kinds of herbs gathered on St. John’s Night (Midsummer Eve) are a remedy for fever;(160) and some of the Wends attribute a curative virtue in general to such plants.(161)