Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/387

 The Magical and Ceremonial Uses of Fire. 359

This must suffice as an account of the leading primitive methods of making fire, though our list does not include some of the rarer devices, as, for instance, the pump-drill.

In many parts of the world at the present day, even among quite primitive people, the methods of fire-making mentioned above have been superseded to a great extent by the introduction of matches by Europeans. But even where this is the case, when fire is needed for ceremonial or magical uses, the old methods are retained.

Let us now go on to consider the magico-religious value of that mysterious agent, fire. Fire is sometimes looked upon as a benign agent, sometimes as a destroying demon. It purifies, warms, and heals. It protects the new-born child, and lights up the road for the departing spirit. It drives off evil influences, destroys disease, makes the sun shine and stops the rain from falling. It plays a large and important part both in the religious and in the social life of all races of mankind from the cradle to the grave. Without it man could not have survived, and the power of producing it differentiates him almost more than anything else from other animals.

Fire as Protective.

Primitive men must have found out in very early days that large fires kept burning through the night would help to safeguard them against wild beasts, man himself being mean- while provided with very inadequate weapons of defence. This might have led up to the idea of fire being a protec- tive agent, and to its use generally as a charm against evil spirits and other dangers. The use of fire as a protecting agent after birth, for the benefit of both mother and child, is almost universal. The idea seems to be that evil spirits are waiting ready to pounce on a child directly it enters the world, and against these demons both mother and child must be guarded. A fire or lamp is therefore kept burning