If you're looking for a magical dance with which to crown your Midsummer's Eve, here's a new one made of ancient parts: the Dance of Oak and Linden.

In Baltic lore (in the Baltics, Midsummer is still the biggest holiday of the year, bigger even than you-know-when), Oak is considered a male tree, Linden a female: two trees, two genders of beauty and strength.

The Midsummer connection is strengthened by the fact that Oak is also held to be the tree of Thunder, most virile of gods, and that the Linden—known as Basswood in the US—perfumes the White Nights of Midsummer with her spicy flowering. You could think of them as the Midsummer equivalents of Midwinter's Holly and Ivy.* 

The Dance of Oak and Linden is a simple round dance, and better it be if danced around a bonfire, or one of its eponymous trees. At its most basic, men bear oak sprays, women linden. (I'm sure that you don't need me to tease out the various possible permutations for you.)

Bearing your oak and linden, then—or whatever the equivalent trees in your landscape are—you join hands and dance.

Here's a song to go with it, dating from circa 1300, the oldest song in English to which we have both words and tune.

 Sumer is i-cumen in,

lhude sing cuckoo:

growth sed and bloweth med

and springth the wude nu:

sing cuckoo.

lhude: loud   sed: seed   bloweth: blooms   med: meadow   wude: wood   nu: now

A Murie (Merry) Midsummer to You and Yours!

*Looking into the Pagan future, one could readily foresee the emergence of a genre of Midsummer Oak-and-Linden carols paralleling Yule's Holly-And-Ivy carols. Poets and songwriters take note!