Mr. A. K. Hamilton Jenkin has made a special place for himself as an authority on old customs in Cornwall, and he has done a very great deal to revive and stimulate interest in customs which were often not understood by those who continued to practise them. Tonight, whilst the bonfires are gleaming out along the rugged hilltops of the West, he will discuss Midsummer Eve in Cornwall, as it was and as it is.
The custom of lighting bonfires at this season of the year, and of leaping over them, and driving cattle around them, is older by far than any written history, and is or was to be found in almost every country of Europe. Mr. Hamilton Jenkin will describe what a wonderful sight it is as, amidst the roar and crackle and driving clouds of smoke, the names go shooting upwards on some dark, rock-strewn hill-top, and how the chain of fires thus lighted, spreads eastwards from the Land's End to the Tamar borderland.