St John's Day

What a great and wonderous sight we will see tonight for Midsummer night. It will finish off our feast of St. John the Baptist in a most amazing way.

We will have feasting and games and a Scotale, same as for all our feasts you may be sure. But tonight at the midnight hour, the men will light the bonfires on the hills and as far as you can see there will be fires! We will all carol around the bonfires and the young men will roll wheels of fire down the hillsides, and test themselves by jumping over the fires and even running through them.

How merry we will be until the end of our midsummer feast. The best part of all will be the somergame with all the foolish acting out, telling the story of the crucifixion, maybe but in a way they never heard of up at the abbey!

The Hay Harvest

St. John's Day marked the end of the half of the year where festivals were most prevalent. From now on, until the autumn, there would be the hard labour of the harvest, beginning about the end of June with bringing in the hay.