(M48) Another plant which popular superstition has often associated with the summer solstice is vervain.(202) In some parts of Spain people gather vervain after sunset on Midsummer Eve, and wash their faces next morning in the water in which the plants have been allowed to steep overnight.(203) In Belgium vervain is gathered on St. John’s Day and worn as a safeguard against rupture.(204) In Normandy the peasants cull vervain on the Day or the Eve of St. John, believing that, besides its medical properties, it possesses at this season the power of protecting the house from thunder and lightning, from sorcerers, demons, and thieves.(205) Bohemian poachers wash their guns with a decoction of vervain and southernwood, which they have gathered naked before sunrise on Midsummer Day; guns which have been thus treated never miss the mark.(206) In our own country vervain used to be sought for its magical virtues on Midsummer Eve.(207) In the Tyrol they think that he who finds a four-leaved clover while the vesper-bell is ringing on Midsummer Eve can work magic from that time forth.(208) People in Berry say that the four-leaved clover is endowed with all its marvellous virtues only when it has been plucked by a virgin on the night of Midsummer Eve.(209) In Saintonge and Aunis the four-leaved clover, if it be found on the Eve of St. John, brings good luck at play;(210) in Belgium it brings a girl a husband.(211) (M49) At Kirchvers, in Hesse, people run out to the fields at noon on Midsummer Day to gather camomile; for the flowers, plucked at the moment when the sun is at the highest point of his course, are supposed to possess the medicinal qualities of the plant in the highest degree. In heathen times the camomile flower, with its healing qualities, its yellow calix and white stamens, is said to have been sacred to the kindly and shining Balder and to have borne his name, being called _Balders-brâ_, that is, Balder’s eyelashes.(212) In Westphalia, also, the belief prevails that camomile is most potent as a drug when it has been gathered on Midsummer Day;(213) in Masuren the plant must always be one of the nine different kinds of plants that are culled on Midsummer Eve to form wreaths, and tea brewed from the flower is a remedy for many sorts of maladies.(214)