8. 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.
Sometimes the need-fire was known as "wild fire," to distinguish it
no doubt from the tame fire produced by more ordinary methods. Among
Slavonic peoples it is called "living fire."
The history of the custom can be traced from the early Middle Ages,
when it was denounced by the Church as a heathen superstition, down
to the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was still
occasionally practised in various parts of Germany, England,
Scotland, and Ireland.
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