Also called Kupala Night, Ivan Kupala, Noc Kupały, St. John's Eve herbs, Midsummer herb gathering
On Midsummer night Slavic villagers gathered healing herbs, floated flower wreaths on rivers, leapt over bonfires and searched the forest for the fern that blooms only at midnight. Herbs picked that night were dried and kept as protection all year.
TraditionSlavic Midsummer custom
RegionPoland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia
EraMedieval to present
Moon◐ Any moon
DaySun
ElementFire
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
TimeAn evening, sunset to midnight
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
The working
On the evening of 23 June (or 6 to 7 July in the Orthodox calendar), go out at sunset and gather herbs you know well, a few stems of each.
Weave field flowers and some of the herbs into a wreath.
If you live near safe, calm water, float the wreath, with a candle in a jar if you like. In Polish and Ukrainian custom, young women watched where it drifted to read their future in love.
Gather with others around a well-tended bonfire, and if the fire is small and safe, jump over its edge in pairs.
Walk out at midnight to look for the fern flower; the search itself, not the finding, is the custom.
Hang the rest of the herbs to dry in bunches indoors.
Keep the dried bunch by the door or the hearth until next Midsummer, then burn it safely and pick fresh.
Take care: Pick only plants you can identify with certainty and do not eat or drink them. Mugwort is unsafe in pregnancy. Jump only over small, controlled fires with water nearby, and float wreaths only on calm, shallow water you can reach safely.
Versions across time and place
i
Fern flower and adder's-tongue
Polish ethnobotany · 19th century
Ferns do not flower, yet the legend said one bloomed for a moment at Kupala midnight and gave its finder treasure, luck or the speech of animals. Polish ethnographer Seweryn Udziela collected herbarium sheets of plants tied to the legend. Botanists suggest it grew partly from women rubbing adder's-tongue fern leaves on their skin to make themselves attractive.
Recorded in: Polish Academy of Sciences Botanical Garden, 'The legend of the fern flower in Seweryn Udziela's herbarium'
ii
Gogol's St. John's Eve
Ukrainian folk tale in Russian literature · 1830 to 1831
Gogol retold a Ukrainian tale in which a poor young man finds the fern flower on Kupala night with a demon's help and wins gold at a terrible price. The story fixed the fern flower in the Russian and Ukrainian imagination as a dangerous gift.
Recorded in: Nikolai Gogol, 'St. John's Eve', in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831)
iii
St. John's herbs in Western Europe
English, German and French Midsummer custom · Medieval to 19th century
Across Western Europe, St. John's Eve was also the night for lighting bonfires and gathering herbs, especially St. John's wort, mugwort and orpine, which were hung over doors against evil and lightning. Hutton describes Midsummer fires as one of the most widespread festivals in medieval Europe.
Recorded in: Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (1996)
History
Kupala Night was the high point of the Slavic summer, a festival of fire and water held around the solstice. When the Church could not stamp it out, it merged with the feast of St. John the Baptist on 24 June, and in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia the Julian calendar moved it to the night of 6 to 7 July. Bonfires, river bathing, dew-washing and herb gathering all promised health, purification and love for the coming year.
Anthropologists at the University of Łódź describe the festival's two layers, the older pre-Christian Kupala and the Christian St. John's Eve, which now run together in Polish and Ukrainian practice. Herbs gathered that night were believed to be at their strongest. Communities across Poland and Ukraine still hold Kupala nights with wreath-floating and bonfires, and the fern flower remains a national legend.
