Chapter 20

Accurate as these accounts are, a few minor details have escaped them, whose observance is seen to in some districts at least. Thus, in the Halberstadt country the ropes of the wooden roller are pulled by two chaste boys. (47) Need fires have remained in use longer and more commonly in North Germany, (48) yet are not quite unknown in the South. Schmeller and Stalder are silent, but in Appenzell the country children still have a game of rubbing a rope against a stick till it catches fire: this they call 'de tüfel häle,' unmanning the devil, despoiling him of his strength. (49) But Tobler 252b says, what boys call de tüfel häla is spinning a pointed stick, with a string coiled round it, rapidly in a wooden socket, till it takes fire. The name may be one of those innumerable allusions to Loki, the devil and fire-god (p. 242). Nic. Gryse, in a passage to be quoted later, speaks of sawing fire out of wood, as we read elsewhere of symbolically sawing the old woman in two. The Practica of Berthol. Carrichter, phys. in ord. to Maximilian II., gives a description (which I borrow from Wolfg. Hildebrand on Sorcery, Leipz. 1631. p. 226) of a magic bath, which is not to be heated with common flint-and-steel fire: 'Go to an appletree which the lightning hath stricken, let a saw be made thee of his wood, therewith shalt thou saw upon a wooden threshold that much people passeth over, till it be kindled. Then make firewood of birch-fungus, and kindle it at this fire, with which thou shalt heat the bath, and on thy life see it go not out' (see Suppl.).

Nôtfiur can be derived from nôt (need, necessitas), whether because the fire is forced to show itself or the cattle to tread the hot coal, or because the operation takes place in a time of need, of pestilence. Nevertheless I will attempt another explanation: notfiur, nodfiur may stand for an older hnotfiur, hnodfiur, from the root hniudan, OHG. hniotan, ON. hnioða [[to rivet, to clench]] (quassare, terere, tundere); (50) and would mean a fire elicited by thumping, rubbing, shaking.

And in Sweden it is actually called both vrideld and gnideld: the one from vrida (torquere, circumgagere), AS. wriðan, OHG. rîdan, MHG. rîden; the other from gnida (fricare), OHG. knîtan, AS. cnîdan (conterere, fricare, depsere).

It was produced in Sweden as with us, by violently rubbing two pieces of wood together, in some districts even near the end of last century; sometimes they used boughs of nine sorts of wood. (51) The smoke rising from gnideld was deemed salutary, fruit-trees or nets fumigated with it became the more productive of fruit or fish. On this fumigation with vriden eld, and on driving the cattle out over such smoke, conf. Superst. Swed. 89. 108. We can see that the purposes to which needfire was applied must have been far more numerous in heathen times: in Germany we find but a fragment of it in use for diseased cattle, but the superstitious practice of girls kindling nine sorts of wood on Christmas eve (Sup. I, 955) may assure us of a wider meaning having once belonged to needfire (see Suppl.).

In the North of England it is believed that an angel strikes a tree, and then needfire can be got from it; did they rub it only out of windfall wood? or does striking here not mean felling?

Of more significance are the Scotch and Irish procedures, which I am glad to give in the words of the original communications. The following I owe to the kindness of Miss Austin; it refers to the I. of Mull (off the W. coast of Scotland), and to the year 1767. 'In consequence of a disease among 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 of oak wood. They extinguished every fire in every house within sight of the hill; the wheel was then turned from east to west over the 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. Then they 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 over as 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. The whole contry believed him accursed' (see Suppl.).

In the Highlands, and especially in Caithness, they now use needfire chiefly as a remedy for preternatural diseases of cattle brought on by witchcraft. (52) 'To defeat the sorceries, certain persons who have the power to do so are sent for to raise the needfire. Upon any small river, lake, or island, a circular booth of stone or turf is erected, on which a couple or rafter of a birchtree is placed, and the roof covered over. In the centre is set a perpendicular post, fixed by a wooden pin to the couple, the lower end being placed in an oblong groove on the floor; and another pole is placed horizontally between the upright post and the legs of the couple, into both of which the ends, being tapered, are inserted. This horizontal timber is called the augur, being provided with four short arms or spokes by which it can be turned round. As many men as can be collected are then set to work, having first divested themselves of all kinds of metal, and two at a time continue to turn the pole by means of the levers, while others keep driving wedges under the upright post so as to press it against the augur, which by the friction soon becomes ignited. From this the needfire is instantly procured, and all other fires being immediately quenched, those are rekindled both in dwelling house and offices are accounted sacred, and the cattle are successively made to smell them.' Let me also make room for Martin's description, (53) which has features of its own: 'The forced fire, or fire of necessity, (54) which they used as an antidote against the plague or murrain in cattle; and it was performed thus: all the fires in the parish were extinguished, and then eighty-one (9 x 9) married men, being thought the necessary number for effecting this design, took two great planks of wood, and nine of 'em were employed by turns, who by their repeated efforts rubbed one of the planks against the other until the heat thereof produced fire; and from this forced fire each family is supplied with new fire, which is no sooner kindled than a pot full of water is quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague, or upon the cattle that have the murrain. And this they all say they find successful by experience: it was practised on the mainland opposite to the south of Skye, within these thirty years.' As in this case there is water boiled on the frictile fire, and sprinkled with the same effect, so Eccard (Fr. or. 1, 425) tells us, that one Whitsun morning he saw some stablemen rub fire out of wood, and boil their cabbage over it, under the belief that by eating it they would be proof against fever all that year. A remarkable story from Northamptonshire, and of the present century, confirms that sacrifices of the young cow in Mull, and shows that even in England superstitious people would kill a calf to protect the herd from pestilence: Miss C----and her cousin walking saw a fire in a field, and a crowd round it. They said, 'what is the matter?' 'Killing a calf.' 'What for?' 'To stop the murrain.' They went away as quickly as possible. On speaking to the clergyman, he made inquiries. The people did not like to talk of the affair, but it appeared that when there is a disease among the cows, or the calves are born sickly, they sacrifice (i.e. kill and burn) one for good luck.' [A similar story from Cornwall in Hone's Daybook 1, 153.]

Unquestionably needfire was a sacred thing to other nations beside the Teutonic and Celtic. The Creeks in N. America hold an annual harvest festival, commencing with a strict fast of three days, during which the fires are put out in all houses. On the fourth morning the chief priest by rubbing two dry sticks together lights a new clean fire, which is distributed among all the dwellings; not till then do the women carry home the new corn and fruits from the harvest field. (55) The Arabs have for fire-friction two pieces of wood called March and Aphar, the one male, the other female. The Chinese say the emperor Sui was the first who rubbed wood against wood; the inconvenient method is retained as a holy one. Indians and Persians turn a piece of cane round in dry wood, Kanne's Urk. 454-5 (see Suppl.).

It is still more interesting to observe how nearly the old Roman and Greek customs correspond. Excerpts from Festus (O. Müller 106, 2) say: 'ignis Vestae si quando interstinctus esset, virgines verberibus afficiebantur a pontifice, quibus mos erat, tabulam felicis materiae tam diu terebrare, quousque exceptum ignem cribro aeneo virgo in aedem ferret.' The sacred fire of the goddess, once extinguished, was not to be rekindled, save by generating the pure element anew. A plank of the choice timber of sacred trees was bored, i. e. a pin turned round in it, till it gave out sparks. The act of catching the fire in a sieve, and so conveying it into the temple, is suggestive of a similar carrying of water in a sieve, of which there is some account to be given further on. Plutarch (in Numa 9) makes out that new fire was obtained not by friction, but by intercepting the sun's rays in clay vessels designed for the purpose. (56) But Lemnos, the island on which Zeus had flung down the celestial fire-god Hephæstus, (57) harboured a fire-worship of its own. Once a year every fire was extinguished for nine days, till a ship brought some fresh from Delos off the sacred hearth of Apollo: for some days it drifts on the sea without being able to land, but as soon as it runs in, there is fire served out to every one for domestic use, and a new life begins. The old fire was no longer holy enough; by doing without it altogether for a time, men would learn to set the true value on the element (see Suppl.). (58) Like Vesta, St. Bridget of Ireland (d. 518 or 521) had a perpetual fire maintained in honour of her near Kildare; a wattled fence went round it, which none but women durst approach; it was only permissible to blow it with bellows, not with the mouth. (59) The mode of generating it is not recorded.

The wonderful amount of harmony in these accounts, and the usages of needfire themselves, point back to a high antiquity. The wheel seems to be an emblem of the sun, whence light and fire proceed; I think it likely that it was provided with nine spokes: 'thet niugenspetze fial' survives in the Frisian laws, those nine oaken spindles whose friction against the nave produced fire signify the nine spokes standing out of the nave, and the same sacred number turns up again in the nine kinds of wood, in the nine and eighty-one men that rub. We can hardly doubt that the wheel when set on fire formed the nucleus and centre of a holy and purifying sacrificial flame. Our weisthümer (2, 615-6. 693-7) have another remarkable custom to tell of. At the great yearly assize a cartwheel, that had lain six weeks and three days soaking in water (or a cesspool), was placed in a fire kindled before the judges, and the banquet lasts till the nave, which must on no account be turned or poked, be consumed to ashes. This I take to be a last relic of the pagan sacrificial feast, and the wheel to have been the means of generating the fire, of which it is true there is nothing said. In any case we have here the use of a cartwheel to feed a festal flame.




ENDNOTES:

47. All over England on the 1^st of May they set up a May pole, which may be from pole, palus, AS. pol; yet Pol, Phol may deserve to be taken into account too. [Back]

48. Joh. Timeus On the Easter fire, Hamb. 1590; a reprint of it follows Reiske's Notfeuer. Letzner's Historia S. Bonif., Hildesh. 1602. 4, cap. 12. Leukfeld's Antiq. gandersh. pp. 4-5. Eberh. Baring's Beschr. der (Lauensteiner) Saala, 1744. 2, 96. Hamb. mag. 26, 302 (1762). Hannöv. mag. 1766, p. 216. Rathlef's Diepholz, Brem. 1767. 3, 36-42. (Pratje's) Bremen und Verden 1, 165. Bragur vi. 1, 35. Geldersche volksalmanak voor 1835, p. 19. Easter fire is in Danish paaske-blus or -blust; whether Sweden has the custom I do not know, but Olaus Magnus 15, 5 affirms that Scandinavia has Midsummer fires. Still more surprising that England has no trace of an Easter fire; we have a report of such from Carinthia in Sartori's Reise 2, 350. [Back]

49. Rosenkranz, Neue zeitschr. f. gesch. der germ. völk. i. 2, 7. [Back]

50. Letzner says (ubi supra), that betwixt Brunstein and Wibbrechtshausen, where Boniface had overthrown the heathen idol Reto (who may remind us of Beda's Rheda), on the same Retberg the people 'did after sunset on Easter day, even within the memory of man, hold the Easter fire, which the men of old named bocks-thorn.' On the margin stands his old authority again, the lost Conradus Fontanus (supra p. 190). How the fire itself should come by the name of buck's or goat's thorn, is hard to see; it is the name of a shrub, the tragacanth. Was bocks-thorn thrown into the Easter flames, as certain herbs were into the Midsummer fire? [Back]

51. N.B., some maintain that the Easter candle was ignited by burning-glasses or crystals (Serrarius ad Epist. Bonif. p. 343) [Back]

52. Franz Wessel's Beschreibung des päbstlichen gottesdienstes, Stralsund ed. by Zober, 1837, p. 10. [Back]

53. 'Judic. inquiry resp. the Easter fire burned, contr. to prohib., on the Kogelnberg near Volkmarsen, Apr. 9, 1833,' see Niederhess. wochenbl. 1834, p. 2229ª. The older prohibitions allege the unchristian character, later ones the waste of timber. Even bonfires for a victory were very near being suppressed. [Back]

54. The best treatise is: Franc. Const. de Khautz de ritu ignis in natali S. Johannis bapt. accensi, Vindob. 1759, 8vo. [Back]

55. All the good MSS. have, not sunnewende, but sunewende, which can only stand for sunwende, formed like suntac. We also find 'zu sungihten,' Scheffer's Haltaus, pp. 109, 110; giht here corresp. to Goth. gahts (gressus), and allows us to guess an OHG. sunnagaht. [Back]

56. Hahn's Monum. 2, 693. Sutner's Berichtigungen, Münch. 1797, p. 107 (an. 1401). [Back]

57. On June 20, 1653, the Nürnberg town-council issued the following order: Whereas experience heretofore hath shown, that after the old heathenish use, on John's day in every year, in the country, as well in towns as villages, money and wood hath been gathered by young folk, and thereupon the so-called sonnenwendt or zimmet fire kindled, and thereat winebibbing, dancing about the said fire, leaping over the same, with burning of sundry herbs and flowers, and setting of brands from the said fire in the fields, and in many other ways all manner of superstitious work carried on---Therefore the Hon. Council of Nürnberg town neither can nor ought to forbear to do away with all such unbecoming superstition, paganism, and peril of fire on this coming day of St. John (Neuer lit. anz. 1807, p. 318). [Sunwend fires forbidden in Austria in 1850, in spite of Goethe's 'Fires of John we'll cherish, Why should gladness perish?'---Suppl.] [Back]

58. Gasseri Ann. august., ad an. 1497, Schm. 3, 261; conf. Ranke's Roman. u. German. völk. 1, 102. [Back]

59. Mém. des antiquaires de Fr. 5, 383-6. [Back]