In point of fact there is, as Kuhn
has indicated, some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was
originally thus produced. We have seen that many Hungarian
swine-herds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel round a
wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs through
the fire thus made. At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the "fire of
heaven," as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the
fifteenth of June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with
pitch and plaited with straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet
high, the top of the pole being inserted in the nave of the wheel.
This fire was made on the summit of a mountain, and as the flame
ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with eyes and arms
directed heavenward. Here the fixing of a wheel on a pole and
igniting it suggests that originally the fire was produced, as in
the case of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on
which the ceremony takes place (the fifteenth of June) is near
midsummer; and we have seen that in Masuren fire is, or used to be,
actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an
oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so obtained is
used to light a bonfire.
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