Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally kindled on these occasions favours the view that it was intended to be a mock-sun. For, as various scholars have seen,[729] it is highly probable that originally at these festivals fire was universally obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood. We have seen that this is still the case in some places both at the Easter and midsummer fires, and that it is expressly stated to have been formerly the case at the Beltane fires.[730] But what makes it almost certain that this was once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is the analogy of the need-fires. Need-fires are kindled, not at fixed periods, but on occasions of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of a murrain, and the cattle are driven through the need-fire, just as they are sometimes driven through the midsummer fires.[731] Now, the need-fire has always been produced by the friction of wood and sometimes by the revolution of a wheel; in Mull, for example, it was made by turning an oaken wheel over nine oaken spindles from east to west, that is, in the direction of the sun. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel employed to produce the need-fire represents the sun;[732] and if the spring and midsummer fires were originally produced in the same way, it would be a confirmation [pg 270] of the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn has pointed out,[733] some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was originally thus produced. For at Obermedlingen in Swabia the “fire of heaven,” as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (15th June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of the mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms directed heaven-ward.[734] Here the fact of a wheel being fixed on the top of a pole and ignited makes it probable that originally the fire was produced, as in the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on which the ceremony takes place (15th June) is near midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is (or was) actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so produced is used to light a bonfire.
Once more, the influence which these bonfires are supposed to exert on the weather and on vegetation, goes to show that they are sun-charms, since the effects ascribed to them are identical with those of sunshine. Thus, in Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from the direction in which the flames of the bonfire are blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No doubt at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one of the cases in which magic has [pg 271] dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an omen that the harvest will be abundant. But doubtless the older view was, not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that they actually produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames acting like sunshine on the corn. Indeed, this older view must still have been held by people in the Isle of Man when they lit fires to windward of their fields in order that the smoke might blow over them. Again, the idea that the corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, is certainly a remnant of the belief in the quickening and fertilising power of the bonfires. The same belief reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops, and again it plainly underlies the custom of mixing the ashes of the bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, or of scattering the ashes by themselves over the field. The belief that the flax will grow as high as the people leap over the bonfire belongs clearly to the same class of ideas. Once more, we saw that at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage would be abundant. So firmly was this belief held that the successful performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers to levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the unextinguished wheel meant an unclouded sun, and this in turn meant an abundant vintage. So the waggon-load of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards round about was in fact a payment for the sunshine which they had procured for the grapes.
The interpretation of these fire-customs as charms for making sunshine is confirmed by a parallel custom observed by the Hindoos of Southern India at the Pongol or Feast of Ingathering. The festival is celebrated in the early part of January, when, according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn, and the chief event of the festival coincides with the passage of the sun. For some days previously the boys gather heaps of sticks, straw, dead leaves, and everything that will burn. On the morning of the first day of the festival the heaps are fired. Every street and lane has its bonfire. The young folk leap over the fire or pile on fresh fuel. This fire is an offering to Sûrya, the sun-god, or to Agni, the deity of fire; it “wakes him from his sleep, calling on him again to gladden the earth with his light and heat.”[735] To say that the fires awaken the sun-god from his sleep is only a metaphorical and perhaps modernised expression of the belief that they actually help to rekindle the sun's light and heat.
The custom of leaping over the fire and driving cattle through it may be intended, on the one hand, to secure for man and beast a share of the vital energy of the sun, and, on the other hand, to purify them from all evil influences; for to the primitive mind fire is the most powerful of all purificatory agents. The latter idea is obviously uppermost in the minds of Greek women when they leap over the midsummer fire, saying, “I leave my sins behind me.” So in Yucatan at a New Year's festival the people used to light a huge bonfire and pass through it, in the belief that this was a means of [pg 273] ridding themselves of their troubles.[736] The custom of driving cattle through a fire is not confined to Europe. At certain times the Hottentots make a fire of chips, dry branches, and green twigs, so as to raise a great smoke. Through this fire they drive their sheep, dragging them through by force, if necessary. If the sheep make their escape without passing through the fire, it is reckoned a heavy disgrace and a very bad omen. But if they pass readily through or over the fire, the joy of the Hottentots is indescribable.[737]
The procession or race with burning torches, which so often forms a part of these fire-festivals, appears to be simply a means of diffusing far and wide the genial influence of the bonfire or of the sunshine which it represents. Hence on these occasions lighted torches are very frequently carried over the fields, sometimes with the avowed intention of fertilising them;[738] and with the same intention live coals from the bonfire are sometimes placed in the field “to prevent blight.” The custom of trundling a burning wheel over the fields, which is practised for the express purpose of fertilising them, embodies the same idea in a still more graphic form; since in this way the mock-sun itself, not merely its light and heat represented by torches, is made actually to pass over the ground which is to receive its quickening and kindly influence. Again, the custom of carrying lighted brands round the cattle is plainly [pg 274] equivalent to driving the animals through the fire. It is quite possible that in these customs the idea of the quickening power of fire may be combined with the conception of it as a purgative agent for the expulsion or destruction of evil beings. It is certainly sometimes interpreted in the latter way by persons who practise the customs; and this purgative use of fire comes out very prominently, as we have seen, in the general expulsion of demons from towns and villages. But in the present class of cases this aspect of it is perhaps secondary, if indeed it is more than a later misinterpretation of the custom.
It remains to ask, What is the meaning of burning an effigy in these bonfires? The effigies so burned, as was remarked above, can hardly be separated from the effigies of Death which are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring; and grounds have been already given for regarding the so-called effigies of Death as really representations of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and midsummer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so. For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields in the belief that they will keep vermin from the crop. Again, the rule that the last married bride must leap over the fire in which the straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring is a special attribute of tree-spirits;[739] it is therefore a fair presumption that the burning [pg 275] effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of the effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable when the effigy is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from head to foot with flowers.[740] Again, it is to be noted that instead of an effigy living trees are sometimes burned both in the spring and midsummer bonfires.[741] Now, considering the frequency with which the tree-spirit is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to suppose that when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a representative of the tree-spirit. This, again, is confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being carried by the boys, the latter by the girls;[742] and, second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and burned with it.[743] In these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the tree-spirit is represented, as we have found it represented before, in duplicate, both by the tree and by the effigy. That the true character of the effigy as a representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it as the effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they considered objectionable, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.
The general reasons for killing a god or his [pg 276] representative have been examined in the preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be a deity of vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by fire. For light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and, on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and crops. In other words, by burning the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents the sun, you make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty of sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure enough sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained, on the principles of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the representative of vegetation through the fire instead of burning him. In point of fact this is sometimes done. In Russia, as we have seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in the midsummer fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it.[744] But, for the reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die; so next day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this Russian custom, therefore, the passage of the image through the fire is a sun-charm pure and simple; the killing of the god is a separate act, and the mode of killing him—by drowning—is probably a rain-charm. But usually people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine distinction; for the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous, they think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat, and it is also advantageous to kill him, and they combine these advantages in a rough-and-ready way by burning him.
Finally, we have to ask, were human beings formerly burned as representatives of the tree-spirit or deity of vegetation? We have seen reasons for believing that living persons have often acted as representatives of the tree-spirit, and have suffered death as such. There is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. It would have been surprising if it did, when we remember the record of Christian Europe. Now, in the fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is being burned. And at the Beltane fires the pretended victim was seized, and a show made of throwing him into the fire, and for some time afterwards people affected to speak of him as dead. In the following customs Mannhardt is probably right in recognising traces of an old custom of burning a leaf-clad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for the bonfire. As he gets the wood he sings—
“Forest trees I want,
No sour milk for me,