European festivals of fire in seasons of distress and calamity. The need-fire.
The fire-festivals hitherto described are all celebrated periodically at certain stated times of the year. But besides these regularly recurring celebrations the peasants in many parts of Europe have been wont from time immemorial to resort to a ritual of fire at irregular intervals in seasons of distress and calamity, above all when their cattle were attacked by epidemic disease. No account of the popular European fire-festivals would be complete without some notice of these remarkable rites, which have all the greater claim on our attention because they may perhaps be regarded as the source and origin of all the other fire-festivals; certainly they must date from a very remote antiquity. The general name by which they are known among the Teutonic peoples is need-fire.[688]
The need-fire in the Middle Ages. The need-fire at Neustadt in 1598.
The history of the need-fire can be traced back to the early Middle Ages; for in the reign of Pippin, King of the Franks, the practice of kindling need-fires was denounced as a heathen superstition by a synod of prelates and nobles held under the presidency of Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz.[689] Not long afterwards the custom was again forbidden, along with many more relics of expiring paganism, in an “Index of Superstitions and Heathenish Observances,” which has been usually referred to the year 743 a.d., though some scholars assign it a later date under the reign of Charlemagne.[690] In Germany the need-fires would seem to have been popular down to the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus in the year 1598, when a fatal cattle-plague was raging at Neustadt, near Marburg, a wise man of the name of Joh. Köhler induced the authorities of the town to adopt the following remedy. A new waggon-wheel was taken and twirled round an axle, which had never been used before, until the friction elicited fire. With this fire a bonfire was next kindled between the gates of the town, and all the cattle were driven through the smoke and flames. Moreover, every householder had to rekindle the fire on his hearth by means of a light taken from the bonfire. Strange to say, this salutary measure had no effect whatever in staying the [pg 271] cattle-plague, and seven years later the sapient Joh. Köhler himself was burnt as a witch. The farmers, whose pigs and cows had derived no benefit from the need-fire, perhaps assisted as spectators at the burning, and, while they shook their heads, agreed among themselves that it served Joh. Köhler perfectly right.[691] According to a writer who published his book about nine years afterwards, some of the Germans, especially in the Wassgaw mountains, confidently believed that a cattle-plague could be stayed by driving the animals through a need-fire which had been kindled by the violent friction of a pole on a quantity of dry oak wood; but it was a necessary condition of success that all fires in the village should previously be extinguished with water, and any householder who failed to put out his fire was heavily fined.[692]
Method of kindling the need-fire.
The method of kindling the need-fire is described as follows by a writer towards the end of the seventeenth century: “When an evil plague has broken out among the cattle, large and small, and the herds have thereby suffered great ravages, the peasants resolve to light a need-fire. On a day appointed there must be no single flame in any house nor on any hearth. From every house a quantity of straw and water and underwood must be brought forth; then a strong oaken pole is fixed firmly in the earth, a hole is bored in it, and a wooden winch, well smeared with pitch and tar, is inserted in the hole and turned round forcibly till great heat and then fire is generated. The fire so produced is caught in fuel and fed with straw, heath, and underwood till it bursts out into a regular need-fire, which must then be somewhat spread out between walls or fences, and the cattle and horses driven through it twice or thrice with sticks and whips. Others set up two posts, each with a hole in it, and insert a winch, along with old greasy rags, in the holes. Others use a thick rope, collect nine kinds of wood, and keep them in violent motion till fire leaps forth. Perhaps there may be other [pg 272] ways of generating or kindling this fire, but they are all directed simply at the cure of the cattle. After passing twice or thrice through the fire the cattle are driven to their stalls or to pasture, and the heap of wood that had been collected is destroyed, but in some places every householder must take with him a brand, extinguish it in a washing-tub or trough, and put it in the manger where the cattle are fed, where it must lie for some time. The poles that were used to make the need-fire, together with the wood that was employed as a winch, are sometimes burned with the rest of the fuel, sometimes carefully preserved after the cattle have been thrice driven through the flames.”[693]
The mode of kindling the need-fire about Hildesheim.
Sometimes the need-fire was known as the “wild fire,” to distinguish it no doubt from the tame fire produced by more ordinary methods. The following is Grimm's account of the mode of kindling it which prevailed in some parts of Central Germany, particularly about Hildesheim, down apparently to the first half of the nineteenth century: “In many places of Lower Saxony, especially among the mountains, the custom prevails of preparing the so-called ‘wild fire’ for the purpose of preventing cattle-plague; and through it first the pigs, then the cows, and last of all the geese are driven. The proceedings on the occasion are as follows. The principal farmers and parishioners assemble, and notice is served to every inhabitant to extinguish entirely all fire in his house, so that not even a spark remains alight in the whole village. Then young and old repair to a road in a hollow, usually towards evening, the women carrying linen, and the men wood and tow. Two oaken poles are driven into the ground about a foot and a half from each other. Each pole has in the side facing the other a socket into which a cross-piece as thick as a man's arm is fitted. The sockets are stuffed with linen, and the cross-piece is rammed in as tight as possible, while the poles are bound together at the top by ropes. A rope is wound about the round, smooth cross-piece, and the free ends of the rope at both sides are gripped by several [pg 273] persons, who pull the cross-piece to and fro with the utmost rapidity, till through the friction the linen in the sockets takes fire. The sparks of the linen are immediately caught in tow or oakum and waved about in a circle until they burst into a bright glow, when straw is applied to it, and the flaming straw used to kindle the brushwood which has been stacked in piles in the hollow way. When this wood has blazed up and the fire has nearly died out again, the people hasten to the herds, which have been waiting in the background, and drive them forcibly, one after the other, through the glow. As soon as all the beasts are through, the young folk rush wildly at the ashes and cinders, sprinkling and blackening each other with them; those who have been most sprinkled and blackened march in triumph behind the cattle into the village and do not wash themselves for a long time. If after long rubbing the linen should not catch fire, they guess that there is still fire somewhere in the village; then a strict search is made from house to house, any fire that may be found is put out, and the householder is punished or upbraided. The ‘wild fire’ must be made by prolonged friction; it may not be struck with flint and steel. Some villages do not prepare it yearly as a preventive of cattle-plague, but only kindle it when the disease has actually broken out.”[694] In the Halberstadt district the ends of the rope which was used to make the cross-piece revolve in the sockets had to be pulled by two chaste young men.[695]
The mode of kindling the need-fire in the Mark.
In the Mark down to the first half of the nineteenth century the practice was similar. We read that “in many parts of the Mark there still prevails on certain occasions the custom of kindling a need-fire, it happens particularly when a farmer has sick pigs. Two posts of dry wood are planted in the earth amid solemn silence before the sun rises, and round these posts hempen ropes are pulled to and fro till the wood kindles; whereupon the fire is fed with dry leaves and twigs and the sick beasts are driven through it. In some places the fire is produced by the friction of an old cart-wheel.”[696]