Godfrey Higgins in his "Celtic Druids," asserts, on the authority of Hayman Rooke, that "so late as the year 1786, the custom of lighting fires was continued at the Druid temple at Bramham, near Harrowgate, Yorkshire, on the eve of the summer solstice." The Bramham crags referred to present a singularly curious specimen of the partial disintegration of huge rocks belonging to the millstone grit series. Their present peculiar forms are not now attributed by the learned to human agency, in any marked degree at least, but to the denuding action of water, frost, and other geological conditions or phenomena. Nevertheless, from the wild and even weird aspect of the group and its elevated site, it is by no means improbable that it has been used in early times as a place of worship, or as the locality for the performance of superstitious rites of the class referred to. Doubtless, other localities of a similar character might be pointed out. "Beacon Fell," near "Parlick Pike," and the "Tandle Hills," near Rochdale, may have been used as places of public assembly, and for the performance of similar superstitious observances. The same may be said of Ingleborough, which yet exhibits remains of Keltic occupation.
This fire-worship, amongst a barbarous people, appears to have had by no means a strange or unnatural origin. Mr. Walter Kelly, after a very elaborate analysis, concludes that the Prometheus of the Greeks and the Vedic Mâtarisvan are "essentially the same." "The elder fire-gods, Agni and Rudra," he says, "had a troop of fire-kindling attendants, called Pramathas or Pramâthas," and he regards Prometheus as the Greek form of this word. He calls attention to the fact that Diodorus says of the celebrated Titan, that "according to the mythographers he stole fire from the gods, but that in reality he was the inventor of the fire-making instrument." The discoverer of the chark, or "fire-drill," an instrument for obtaining fire by artificial means, would be so great a benefactor to a people that had to suffer all the inconveniences resulting from occasional fireless hearths, that we may well understand why he should be invested by his astonished and delighted fellow-savages with miraculous or supernatural powers.[11] Doubtless the production of fire by the rubbing together of two pieces of dry timber preceded this discovery, but, under many circumstances, the operation must have been a most laborious one, and ofttimes impracticable. But with the "chark" the result was nearly as certain as when flint, steel, and tinder were employed for this purpose. It was a very simple instrument indeed, but it has nevertheless exercised a marvellous influence on the destinies of mankind. It consisted merely of a piece of soft dry wood with a hole drilled in its centre, into which a rod of hard wood, ash, or oak, was placed, and caused to revolve with rapidity by a cord, passed round it, being pulled and slackened at each end alternately. A wheel and its axle have hence become types of the sun and the thunderbolt. Fire produced in this original way was considered sacred. Even the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Kelts, and some Christian populations until recent times, adopted the same or a similar process in the lighting of fires connected with religious ceremonies. Mr. Kelly says "the Church has not quite yet succeeded in effacing the vestiges of their heathen origin. This is especially evident in the usages of many districts, where the purity of the Easter fire (an idea borrowed from Pagan tradition) is secured by deriving the kindling flame either from the consecrated Easter candles, or from the new-born and perfectly pure element produced by the priest from flint and steel." The Vedic chark was made from the wood of two sacred trees; "the sami sprang from heavenly fire sent down to earth, and the asvattha from the vessel which contained it." Kelly adds:—"The idea of marriage, suggested by such a union of the two trees, is also developed in the Veda with great amplitude and minuteness of detail, and is a very prominent element in the whole cycle of myths connected with the chark." Doubtless, we have here exposed the root of the entire system of phallic worship, stripped of much, if not all, of the grossness afterwards attendant upon it. It appears that amongst the Peruvians, who were sun-worshippers, the great national festival was held at the summer solstice. They collected the rays of that luminary in a concave mirror, by which means they rekindled their fires. Sometimes, indeed, they obtained their "need-fire" by friction of wood. Amongst the Mexicans likewise grand religious celebrations took place at the close of the fifty-second year, when the extinguished fires were rekindled "by the friction of sticks." This is a very general practice amongst savage tribes at the present day. Mr. Angus says some of the western tribes of Australia "have no means of kindling fire. They say that it formerly came from the north." Should that of one tribe unfortunately become extinguished, there was nothing for it but journeying to a neighbouring encampment and borrowing a light. The Tasmanians are in the same predicament. The Fegeeans obtain fire by friction. So do other South Sea Islanders, as well as many of the North American Indians. The Dacotahs and Iroquois use an instrument not unlike the drilling bow at present employed for a certain class of work in Europe. According to Father Gabian, fire was utterly unknown to the natives of the Ladrone Islands "till Magellan, provoked by their repeated thefts, burned one of their villages. When they saw their wooden houses blazing, they first thought the fire a beast which fed upon wood, and some of them, who came too near, being burnt, the rest stood afar off, lest they should be devoured or poisoned by this powerful animal."
The practice of kindling original or "need-fire" from a superstitious reverence of its sacred character, is yet very common in various parts of Germany, Scotland, and Ireland, and even in England. Mr. Kemble quotes, from the Lanercost Chronicle, of the year 1268, a denunciation by the pious writer, of a practice which "certain bestial persons, monks in garb but not in mind," had taught the ignorant peasantry. This practice consisted in the extraction of fire from wood by friction, and the setting up of what he styles a "simulacrum Priapi," with a view to protect their cattle from disease. This image of Priapus is supposed to refer to the sun-god Fro or Fricco, who, according to Wolf, was worshipped until a very recent period in Belgium, under the form of Priapus. Priapus, the god of gardens or fertility, was the son of Bacchus and Venus. In the more mountainous portions of Wales a remnant of evidently heathen image-worship, of a somewhat similar character, survived till relatively modern times. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, an idol, or what old Fuller calls "a great lubberly image," was removed from the diocese of St. Asaph, and publicly burnt in Smithfield. This image was known by the name of "Darvell Gatheron;" and it was said that the country people were in the habit of sacrificing oxen and sheep to it. Hence its condemnation by the church authorities.
Grimm refers to a remarkable instance of this superstition, which occurred in the island of Mull as recently as 1767, which vividly illustrates the "toughness" of tradition, as Dasent expresses it. He says:—"In consequence of a disease amongst the black cattle, the people agreed to perform an incantation, though they esteemed it a wicked thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles, long enough to produce fire by friction. If the fire were not produced before noon, the incantation lost its effect. They failed for several days running. They attributed this failure to the obstinacy of one householder, who would not let his fires be put out for what he considered so wrong a purpose. However, by bribing his servants, they contrived to have them extinguished, and on that morning raised their fire. They then sacrificed a heifer, cutting in pieces and burning, while yet alive, the diseased part. They then lighted their own hearths from the pile, and ended by feasting on the remains. Words of incantation were repeated by an old man from Morven, who came as the master of the ceremonies, and who continued speaking all the time the fire was being raised. This man was living a beggar at Bellochroy. Asked to repeat the spell, he said the sin of repeating it once had brought him to beggary, and that he dared not say those words again." Many other instances might be cited in Scotland and Ireland: but the one most to the present purpose is related by Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, in which a Lancashire man "unconsciously resorted to the old worship of Baal, and consumed a live calf in a fire, in order to counteract the influences of his unknown enemies." This individual was well known to Mr. Wilkinson. He firmly believed that witchcraft was at the root of all his troubles, and that his cattle had died in consequence of its spells. It appears he had previously tried the famous Lancashire expedient to render his stables and shippons proof against his supernatural enemies—the nailing of horseshoes on all his doors—without obtaining the desired result; so, in desperation, knowing the tradition, he sacrificed a living calf to the fire-god Bel!
The following paragraph appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, on the 29th of June, 1867:—
"The accounts given by the Irish newspapers of the extent to which the old superstition of fire-lighting on Midsummer eve still prevails show how slowly the relics of Paganism disappear among country people, and how natural it was that the old idolatries should come at last to be known as the creed of the 'Pagana,' the dwellers in villages. These Midsummer fires, lighted annually on the hills, are simply relics of the worship of Bel. Beltane-day, or Belteine, is still a May-day as well as a Midsummer festival in the more ignorant districts of Scotland as well as of Ireland, and similar superstitious practices are connected with the lighting of the fires; and, what is still more remarkable, the word is still used in some Scotch almanacs as a term well-known to everybody. In a number of the Scotsman a few years ago appeared the announcement that 'On Beltane-day Mr. Robertson was elected convener of the Trades of Cannongate in Edinburgh.' The next year the following is to be found:—'On Beltane-day the weavers, dyers, etc., of the Cannongate re-elected their office bearers.'"[12]
The records of the Presbytery of Dingwall show that as recently as the latter portion of the seventeenth century, on the island of Innis Maree, in Loch Maree, bulls were offered up as a sacrifice, and milk offered on the hill sides as a libation. In the year 1678, the Presbytery took action against some of the Mackenzie family, "for sacrificing a bull in a heathenish manner, in the island of St. Rufus, for the recovery of the health of Cirstane Mackenzie, who was formerly sick and valetudinarie." Mr. Henderson, in his "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties," mentions an instance, "within fifteen years ago," of "a herd of cattle, in that county (Moray) being attacked with fever," when, "one of them was sacrificed by burning alive, as a propitiatory offering for the rest."
Mr. Robert Hunt, in his "Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall," published in 1865, says that he has been informed "that within the last few years a calf has been thus sacrificed by a farmer in a district where churches, chapels, and schools abound." He afterwards adds:—"While correcting these sheets I am informed of two recent instances of this superstition. One of them was the sacrifice of a calf by a farmer near Pontreath, for the purpose of removing a disease which had long followed his horses and cows. The other was the burning of a living lamb, to save, as the farmer said, 'his flocks from spells which had been cast on 'em.'"
The Midsummer fires, at the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and the yule log ceremonies at Christmas, may be referred to a similar origin. Brand says:—"The Pagan rites of this festival (Midsummer Eve) at the summer solstice may be considered as a counterpart of those used at the winter solstice at Yule-tide." The wheel, the type of the sun, was common to both festivities. Darand describes the practice, at the feast of St. John, of rolling about a wheel, "to signify that the sun, then occupying the highest place in the zodiac, was beginning to descend." The old poet, Naogeorgus, describes the wheel as being covered with straw, which was set on fire at the top of a high mountain, and then despatched on its downward course. He adds that the people imagined all their ill luck accompanied the wheel in its descent.