and other legends about Saint John's Night

According to Italian tradition, the night before the Festivity of Saint John the Baptist – 24th June - saw witches flying toward the Great Walnut of the Eremo di Tizzano (Hermitage of Tizzano) in order to celebrate Sabba (a meeting with the Devil).

If witches felt tired of flying, the locals used to put Saint John's herbs on the threshold of their houses so that witches could not cross it. They include garlic, mugweed, Aaron’s beard, lavender, rue and vervain. Witches could be seen until midnight, and then they were forced to disappear as it was Saint John’s Day.

Even though Saint John's Night, which is better known as the Witches' Night, ceased being an official holiday in 1872, it still a part of folk tradition of many Italian regions, including Emilia-Romagna.

A magic aura has surrounded this event since ancient times: at the summer solstice, the Sun's maximum elevation instilled a new vital force in all herbs and plants on earth: that's why Saint John's Night was an ideal moment to burn the old herbs and plants as well as pick new ones to use for the next magic practices, make propitiatory fires to avert the Evil One as well as protect fields, pick unripe walnuts to prepare the best walnut liqueur, eat snails, including their horns, to defeat the adversities of life and put a bunch of Saint John's herbs under the pillow to have premonitory dreams.