Chapter 20

Paciaudi (87) labours to prove that the fires of St. John have nothing to do with the far older heathenish fires, but have sprung out of the spirit of Christian worship.

In Deut. 18, 10 and 2 Chron. 28, 3 is mentioned the heathen custom of making sons and daughters pass through a fire. In reference to this, Theodoret bp. of Cyrus (d. 458), makes a note on 2 Kings 16, 3: eidon gar en tisi polesin apax tou etouj en taij plateiaij aptomenaj puraj kai tautaj tinaj iperallomenouj kai phdwntaj ou monon paidaj alla kai andraj, ta de ge brefh para twn mhterwn paraferomena dia thj flogoj. edokei de touto apotropiasmoj einai kai kaqarsij. (In some towns I saw pyres lighted once a year in the streets, and not only children but men leaping over them, and the infants passed through the flame by their mothers. This was deemed a protective expiation). (88) He says 'once a year,' but does not specify the day, which would have shown us whether the custom was imported into Syria from Rome. On April 21, the day of her founding, Rome kept the palilia, an ancient feast of herdsmen, in honour of Pales, a motherly divinity reminding us of Ceres and Vesta. (89) This date does not coincide with the solstice, but it does with the time of the Easter fire; the ritual itself, the leaping over the flame, the driving of cattle through the glowing embers, is quite the same as at the Midsummer fire and needfire. A few lines from Ovid's description in the 4^th book of the Fasti shall suffice:

727. certe ego transilui positas ter in ordine flammas.

781. moxque per ardentes stipulae crepitantis acervos

trajicias celeri strenua membra pede.

795. pars quoque, quum saxis pastores saxa feribant,

scintillam subito prosiluisse ferunt;

prima quidem periit; stipulis excepta secunda est,

hoc argumentum flamma palilis habet.

805. per flammas saluisse pecus, saluisse colonos;

quod fit natali nunc quoque, Roma, tuo (see Suppl.).
The shepherds had struck the fire out of stone, and caught it on straw; the leaping through it was to atone and cleanse, and to secure their flock against all harm. That children were placed in the fire by their mothers, we are not told here; we know how the infant Demophoon or Triptolemus was put in the fire by Ceres, as Achilles was by Thetis, to insure his immortality. (90) This fire-worship seems equally at home in Canaan, Syria, Greece and Rome, so that we are not justified in pronouncing it a borrowed and imported thing in any one of them. It is therefore hard to determine from what source the Christians afterwards drew, when they came to use it in their Easter and Midsummer festivals, or on other occasions. Canon 65 of the Council of A.D. 680 already contains a prohibition of these superstitious fires at new moon: taj en taij noumhniaij upo tinwn pro twn oikeiwn ergasthriwn h oikwn anaptomenaj purkaiaj, aj kai uperallesqai tinej, kata to eqoj arcaion, epiceirousin, apo parontoj katarghqhnai prostattomen (The fires kindled before worshops and houses at new moon, which some also leap over after the ancient custom, we command henceforth to be abolished). The same thing was then forbidden, which afterwards, on St. John's day at least, was tolerated, and to some extent connected with church ordinances.

Now, even supposing that the Midsummer fire almost universal throughout Europe had, like the Midsummer bath, proceeded more immediately from the church, and that she had picked it up in Italy directly from the Roman palilia; it does not follow yet, that our Easter fires in northern Germany are a mere modification of those at Midsummer. We are at liberty to derive them straight from fires of our native heathenism: in favour of this view is the difference of day, perhaps also their ruder form; to the last there was more earnestness about them, and more general participation; Midsummer fires were more elegant and tasteful, but latterly confined to children and common people alone, though princes and nobles had attended them before. Mountain and hill are essential to Easter fires, the Solstitial fire was frequently made in streets and marketplaces. Of jumping through the fire, of flowers and wreaths, I find scarcely a word in connexion with the former; friction of fire is only mentioned a few times at the Midsummer fire, never at the Easter, and yet this friction is the surest mark of heathenism, and---as with needfire in North Germany, so with Easter fires there---may safely be assumed. Only of these last we have no accounts whatever. The Celtic bel-fires, and if my conjecture be right, our Phol-days, stand nearly midway betwixt Easter and Midsummer, but nearer to Easter when that falls late. A feature common to all three, and perhaps to all public fires of antiquity, is the wheel, as friction is to all the ancient Easter fires.

I must not omit to mention, that fires were also lighted at the season opposite to summer, at Christmas, and in Lent. To the Yule-fire answers the Gaelic samtheine (p. 614) of the 1^st November. In France they have still in vogue the souche de Noël (from dies natalis, Prov. natal) or the tréfué (log that burns three days, Superst. K, 1. 28), couf. the trefoir in Brand's Pop. antiq. 1, 468. At Marseille they burnt the calendeau or caligneau, a large oaken log, sprinkling it with wine and oil; it devolved on the master of the house to set light to it (Millin 3, 336). In Dauphiné they called it chalendal, it was lighted on Christmas eve and sprinkled with wine, they considered it holy, and had to let it burn out in peace (Champol.-Figeac, p. 124). Christmastide was called chalendes, Prov. calendas (Raynouard 1, 292), because New-year commenced on Dec. 25. In Germany I find the same custom as far back as the 12^th cent. A document of 1184 (Kindl.'s Münst. beitr. ii. urk. 34) says of the parish priest of Ahlen in Münsterland: 'et arborem in nativitate Domini ad festivum ignem suum adducendam esse dicebat.' The hewing of the Christmas block is mentioned in the Weisthümer 2, 264. 302. On the Engl. yule-clog see Sup. I, 1109, and the Scandinav. julblok is well known; the Lettons call Christmas eve blukku wakkars, block evening, from the carrying about and burning of the log (blukkis). (91) Seb. Frank (Weltbuch 51ª) reports the following Shrovetide customs from Franconia: 'In other places they draw a fiery plough kindled by a fire cunningly made thereon, till it fall in pieces (supra, p. 264). Item, they wrap a waggon-wheel all round in straw, drag it up an high steep mountain, and hold thereon a merrymaking all the day, so they may for the cold, with many sorts of pastime, as singing, leaping, dancing, odd or even, and other pranks. About the time of vespers they set the wheel afire, and let it run into the vale at full speed, which to look upon is like as the sun were running from the sky.' Such a 'hoop-trundling' on Shrove Tuesday is mentioned by Schm. 1, 544; the day is called funkentag (spunk.), in the Rheingau hallfeuer, in France, 'la fête des brandons.' (92) It is likely that similar fires take place here and there in connexion with the vintage. In the Voigtland on Mayday eve, which would exactly agree with the bealteine, you may see fires on most of the hills, and children with blazing brooms (Jul. Schmidt's Reichenf. 118). Lastly, the Servians at Christmas time light a log of oak newly cut, badniak, and pour wine upon it. The cake they bake at such a fire and hand round (Vuk's Montenegro, 105) recalls the Gaelic practice (p. 613). The Slavs called the winter solstice koleda, Pol. koleda, Russ. koliadá, answering to the Lat. calendae and the chalendes above; (93) they had games and dances, but the burning of fires is not mentioned. In Lower Germany too kaland had become an expression for feast and revelry (we hear of kalaudgilden, kalandbrüder), without limitation to Christmas time, or any question of fires accompanying it (see Suppl.)

If in the Mid. Ages a confusion was made of the two Johns, the Baptist and the Evangelist, I should incline to connect with St. John's fire the custom of St. John's minne (p. 61), which by rights only concerns the beloved disciple. It is true, no fire is spoken of in connextion with it, but fires were an essential part of the old Norse minne-drinking, and I should think the Sueves with their barrel of ale (p. 56) burnt fires too. In the Saga Hâkonar gôða, cap. 16, we are told: 'eldar scyldo vera â midjo gôlfi î hofino, oc þar katlar yfir, oc scyldi full of eld bera,' should bear the cups round the fire. Very striking to my mind is the 'dricka eldborgs skål' still practised in a part of Sweden and Norway (Sup. K, 122-3). At Candlemas two tall candles are set, each member of the household in turn sits down between them, takes a drink out of a wooden beaker, then throws the vessel backwards over his head. If it falls bottom upwards, the thrower will die; if upright, he remains alive. (94) Early in the morning the goodwife has been up making her fire and baking; she now assembles her servants in a half-circle before the oven door, they all bend the knee, take one bite of cake, and drink eldborgsskål (the fire's health); what is left of cake or drink is cast into the flame. An unmistakeable vestige of heathen fire-worship, shifted to the christian feast of candle-consecration as the one that furnished the nearest parallel to it.

Our ofen, MHG. oven, OHG. ovan, ON. ôn [[ofn - oven?]] represents the Goth. aúhns, O. Swed. omn, ofn, ogn, Swed. ugn, Dan. on; they all mean fornax, i.e. the receptacle in which fire is enclosed (conf. focus, fuoco, feu), but originally it was the name of the fire itself, Slav. ogan, ogen, ogn, Boh. ohen, Lith. ugnis, Lett. ugguns, Lat. ignis, Sanskr. Agni the god of fire. Just as the Swedish servants kneel down before the ugns-hol, our German märchen and sagen have retained the feature of kneeling before the oven and praying to it; the unfortunate, the persecuted, resort to the oven, and bewail their woe, they reveal to it some secret which they dare not confide to the world. (95) What would otherwise appear childish is explained: they are forms and formulas left from the primitive fire-worship, and no longer understood. In the same way people complain and confess to mother earth, to a stone, a plant, an oak, or to the reed (Morolt 1438). This personification of the oven hands together with Mid. Age notions about orcus and hell as places of fire. Conf. Erebi fornax (Walthar. 867), and what was said above, p. 256, on Fornax.

The luminous element permitted a feast to be prolonged into the night, and fires have always been a vehicle for testifying joy. When the worship had passed over into mere joy-fires, ignis jocunditatis, feux de joie, Engl. bon-fires, these could, without any reference to the service of deity, be employed on other occasions, especially the entry of a king or conqueror. Thus they made a torch-waggon follow the king, which was afterwards set on fire, like the plough and wheels at the feast of St. John (RA. 265). 'Faculis et faustis acclamationibus ut prioribus regibus assueverant, obviam ei (non) procedebant,' Lamb. schafn. ad an. 1077. Of what we now call illumination, the lighting up of streets and avenues, there are probably older instances than those I am able to quote: 'von kleinen kerzen manec schoup geleit ûf ölboume loup,' of little tapers many a cluster ranged in olive bower, Parz. 82, 25. Detmar (ed. Grautoff 1, 301) on the Emp. Charles IV.'s entry into Lubeck: 'des nachtes weren die luchten bernde ut allen husen, unde was so licht in der nacht als in dem dage.' The church also escorted with torchlight processions: 'cui (abbati) intranti per noctis tenebras adhibent faces et lampadas,' Chapeaville 2, 532 (12^th cent). 'Hirimannus dux susceptus est ab archiepiscopo manuque deducitur ad ecclesiam accensis luminaribus, cunctisque sonantibus campanis,' Dietm. merseb. 2, 18. 'Taceo coronas tam luminoso fulgore a luminaribus pendentes,' Vita Joh. gorziens. (bef. 984) in Mabillon's Acta Ben., sec. 5, p. 395 (see Suppl.).




ENDNOTES:

87. Day also was imaged as a bird, who dug his claws into the clouds. [Back]

88. Scott's Pirate, Edinb., 1822. [Back]

89. It ought not to be overlooked here, that at the west door of Oðin's hall there also hung a wolf, and over it an eagle (drûpir örn yfir, Sæm. 41b), and that the victorious Saxons fixed an eagle over the city's gate, supra, p. 111. [Back]

90. Festus: 'aquilo ventus a vehementissimo volatu ad instar aquilae appellatur'; conf. Hesychius, akiroj o borraj. [Back]

91. Wackernagel on Ablaut (vowel-changing) p. 30. Eustathius on the Il. 87. 15 Rom. [Back]

92. Finnish runes, Ups. 1819, pp. 58-60. [Back]

93. Fauriel 2, 236. Wh. Müller's 2, 100. [Back]

94. Fauriel 2, 432. Wh. Müller 2, 120. [Back]

95. Sup. I, 343. 1013. Kirchhofer's Schweiz. spr. 327. Cl. Brentano's Libussa p. 432. Sartori's Reise in Kärnten 2, 164. Leoprechting 102. [Back]