" Again, the idea of our European peasants that the
corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible,
may be interpreted as a remnant of the belief in the quickening and
fertilising power of the bonfires. The same belief, it may be
argued, reappears in the notion that embers taken from the bonfires
and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops, and
it may be thought to underlie the customs of sowing flax-seed in the
direction in which the flames blow, of mixing the ashes of the
bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, of scattering the ashes by
themselves over the field to fertilise it, and of incorporating a
piece of the Yule log in the plough to make the seeds thrive. The
opinion that the flax or hemp will grow as high as the flames rise
or the people leap over them belongs clearly to the same class of
ideas. Again, at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing
wheel which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without
being extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage
would be abundant.
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