Tonight, 23 June, is an important one in our calendar of old Kildress traditions.
It’s St. John’s Eve, the eve of celebration before the Feast Day of St John the Baptist. The Feast of St. John closely coincides with the June Solstice, also referred to as Midsummer in the Northern hemisphere. The Christian Holy Day is 24 June but in most countries festivities tend to be held the night before, on St. John’s Eve.
For generations here St John’s Eve was ‘Bonfire Night’, a tradition that was strong here in Kildress up to the 1960s/1970s and still survives, if just about.
It’s one that’s carried on from the pagan midsummer festival and fits a common pattern of Christianity latching onto what were previously pagan festivals. The St John’s Eve Bonfire is not unique to Ireland but also had/has a strong presence in Cornwall, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Quebec, Shetland Isles and Sweden (nearly a ‘Who’s-Who’ of the current Euro 2020 soccer Championships!). It’s therefore something that will be familiar to many of our ‘New Tyrone’ people, the migrants who are now such an important and welcome part of our County.
In Ireland, Bonfire Night tended/tends to be a ‘west-of-the-Shannon’ phenomenon and in Ulster was/is strongest in parts of rural Tyrone and Donegal. Among our Bonfire Night traditions are:
- Music, singing and dancing and something light to eat around the bonfire
- Asking for God’s blessing on farms, fields, crops and animals
- Spreading ashes from the fire over the land as a blessing for the crops
- Girls praying as they walked round the fire so that by the following Bonfire Night they would be married
- Bringing home an ember from the fire and placing it on the family hearth, especially in a new house
Often this prayer, or something similar, would be said as the fire was lit:
“In the honour of God and of St. John, to the fruitfulness and profit of our planting and our work.”
The bonfires themselves are very modest affairs and neither pollute nor present risk.
Weather-permitting, maybe we’ll see a bit of a revival here tonight?
