Wednesday 24th June 2020 is Midsummer’s Day and the Feast of St John the Baptist. It is a celebration that has links to the old summer solstice festivities, although it occurs a few days after the longest day, which usually falls on the 20th or 21st of June.
Traditional celebrations for Midsummer began at sunset on St John’s Eve when in most of England there were bonfires and dancing, however, in his book on Dorsetshire Folk-lore John Symonds Udal says that this does not seem to have been common in Dorset.
Bonfires may not have been widespread in the county, but we have found a reference to them as part of the Midsummer festivities at Portland Bill in the book ‘Old Portland‘, which contains a transcription of the diary of Elizabeth Pearce.
July 1799.
In spite of the Nile last October, I think we none of us went to the Beal [Bill] to see the bonfires last Midsummer with light hearts. But, when we got there, and the fires were all lit, and we watched the younger ones danced round, we grew more merry.
Midsummer’s day was not only a day for celebrations and folklore. It was also one of the four quarter days in England. Quarter days were the traditional days when rents were due, servants were hired and school terms started. In England the four quarter days were Lady Day on 25th March, Midsummer Day on 24th June, Michaelmas on the 29th September and Christmas Day on the 25th December.
These days coincide with old Celtic festivals, that were later turned into Christian feasts by the church. In an agricultural society where many could not read and write linking rent payments and contracts to events that everyone participated in allowed everyone to understand when they began and ended. Even today some rents are still due on the four quarter days.
The quarter days are also used in law, with the Quarter sessions and the Assize courts taking place near each of the quarter days.
Thomas Hardy and William Barnes portray Midsummer’s Eve as a time when you can see into the future and this appears to have been a wide held belief in the county.
In Thomas Hardy’s works Midsummer’s Eve is always celebrated on the 5th July, which is when the day would have been before 11 days were removed from the calendar in 1752.
On Midsummer’s Eve those destined to die in the coming year are seen as ghostly figures in the churchyard. Figures that enter the church and do not come out will die, and those that go in and come out again will be seriously ill but will recover.
Young women perform rituals to catch sight of her future husbands on Midsummer’s Eve. There are several ways of doing this. One method was to throwing hemp seeds over your shoulder and reciting a variation of the following rhyme:
Hemp seed I set, Hemp seed I sow,
The man that is my true love come after me and mow
Your future husband’s image should then appear behind you holding a scythe.
Other methods include putting your shoes in a T so that you will dream of your future husband and putting out bread and cheese and watching to see a spectral image of him come to eat them.
You can also find out the profession of your future husband by digging a hole in the ground and listening to the noises coming from it at exactly noon on midsummer’s day, so if you are on your lunch break on midsummer’s day and come across a young lady listening to a hole in the ground you now know what she is doing.