Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/381

 The Magical and Ceremonial Uses of Fire. 353

fire and saw that it did not go out. Looking after the fire is woman's work, and a woman in the condition represented by the image would not be so likely to be tempted to leave her home and neglect the duty of keeping the fire alight.^ If, by some accident, the fire in one hut went out, a fresh supply was obtained from a neighbour. When travelling has to be done torches are often carried, these being sometimes made of resinous wood which will smoulder for days.

There is no direct evidence to show how man first arrived at the knowledge of making fire for himself. Possibly nature first supplied him with this very necessary commodity. The volcano, and the lightning flash, very probably gave man his first introduction to fire. Fire obtained from such sources might thereupon have been deliberately preserved by man for domestic purposes. Fire obtained from lightning is still highly valued among some primitive people. Thus the Kagoro of Nigeria think that fire originated in the world from lightning. Hence at the present day, if any tree or house is struck by lightning and set on fire, the people immediately extinguish their own fires, and with bundles of grass in their hands hasten to the spot where the lightning fire is burning, carrying back the fire obtained from it to rekindle that on their own hearths. Anyone who failed to do this would be thought to possess black magic. There is evidently some special virtue attached by them to this fire coming, as it were, straight from heaven.-

It would presumably take a very long time for early man to learn how to make his own fire ; and what he had obtained from nature's sources would be very carefully guarded and kept alight, as the supply would be so uncertain. This may be one of the reasons for the custom in vogue up to the present time among many primitive peoples of keeping at any rate one fire in a tribe

^ Cambridge Anthrop. Exped. to Torres Straits, vi. 202.

^A. J. N. Tremearne, The Tailed Headhunters of Nigeria, pp. 193-194.