presented him with a cockade of coloured ribbon.  Next Sunday, if the weather allowed it, all the couples, arrayed in their best attire and attended by their relations, repaired to the wood of Saint Antony, where they mounted a famous stone called the danserosse or danseresse.  Here they found cakes and refreshments of all sorts, and danced to the music of a couple of fiddlers.  The evening bell, ringing the Angelus, gave the signal to depart.  As soon as its solemn chime was heard, every one quitted the forest and returned home.  The exchange of presents between the Valentines went by the name of ransom or redemption (rachat), because it was supposed to redeem the couple from the flames of the bonfire.  Any pair who failed thus to ransom themselves were not suffered to share the merrymaking at the great stone in the forest; and a pretence was made of burning them in small fires kindled before their own doors.[272]

[Bonfires on the First Sunday of Lent in Franche-Comte.]

In the French province of Franche-Comte, to the west of the Jura Mountains, the first Sunday of Lent is known as the Sunday of the Firebrands (Brandons), on account of the fires which it is customary to kindle on that day.  On the Saturday or the Sunday the village lads harness themselves to a cart and drag it about the streets, stopping at the doors of the houses where there are girls and begging for a faggot.  When they have got enough, they cart the fuel to a spot at some little distance from the village, pile it up, and set it on fire.  All the people of the parish come out to see the bonfire.  In some villages, when the bells have rung the Angelus, the signal for the observance is given by cries of, “To the fire! to the fire!” Lads, lasses, and children dance round the blaze, and when the flames have died down they vie with each other in leaping over the red embers.  He or she who does so without singeing his or her garments will be married within the year.  Young folk also carry lighted torches about the streets or the fields, and when they pass an orchard they cry out, “More fruit than leaves!” Down to recent years at Laviron, in the department of Doubs, it was the young married couples of the year who had charge of the bonfires.  In the midst of the bonfire a pole was planted with a wooden figure of a cock fastened to the top.  Then there were races, and the winner received the cock as a prize.[273]

[Bonfires on the first Sunday of Lent in Auvergne; the Granno invoked at these bonfires may be the old Celtic god Grannus, who was identified with Apollo.]

In Auvergne fires are everywhere kindled on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent.  Every village, every hamlet, even every ward, every isolated farm has its bonfire or figo, as it is called, which blazes up as the shades of night are falling.  The fires may be seen flaring on the heights and in the plains; the people dance and sing round about them and leap through the flames.  Then they proceed to the ceremony of the Grannas-mias.  A granno-mio[274] is a torch of straw fastened to the top of a pole.  When the pyre is half consumed, the bystanders kindle the torches at the expiring flames and carry them into the neighbouring orchards, fields, and gardens, wherever there are fruit-trees.  As they march they sing at the top of their voices,