Again and again we are
told that the fires are intended to burn or repel the witches; and
the intention is sometimes graphically expressed by burning an
effigy of a witch in the fire. Hence, when we remember the great
hold which the dread of witchcraft has had on the popular European
mind in all ages, we may suspect that the primary intention of all
these fire-festivals was simply to destroy or at all events get rid
of the witches, who were regarded as the causes of nearly all the
misfortunes and calamities that befall men, their cattle, and their
crops.
This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the
bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost,
perhaps, among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and
of all the ills that witches are believed to work there is probably
none which is so constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the
herds, particularly by stealing the milk from the cows. Now it is
significant that the need-fire, which may perhaps be regarded as the
parent of the periodic fire-festivals, is kindled above all as a
remedy for a murrain or other disease of cattle; and the
circumstance suggests, what on general grounds seems probable, that
the custom of kindling the need-fire goes back to a time when the
ancestors of the European peoples subsisted chiefly on the products
of their herds, and when agriculture as yet played a subordinate
part in their lives.
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