As soon as all the beasts were through, the young folk would
rush wildly at the ashes and cinders, sprinkling and blackening each
other with them; those who were most blackened would march in
triumph behind the cattle into the village and would not wash
themselves for a long time. From the bonfire people carried live
embers home and used them to rekindle the fires in their houses.
These brands, after being extinguished in water, they sometimes put
in the managers at which the cattle fed, and kept them there for a
while. Ashes from the need-fire were also strewed on the fields to
protect the crops against vermin; sometimes they were taken home to
be employed as remedies in sickness, being sprinkled on the ailing
part or mixed in water and drunk by the patient. In the western
islands of Scotland and on the adjoining mainland, as soon as the
fire on the domestic hearth had been rekindled from the need-fire a
pot full of water was set on it, and the water thus heated was
afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague or
upon the cattle that were tainted by the murrain.
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