Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/267

Rh lass is stuck, well smeared with cart-pitch and tar, and turned round so long that, with the fierce heat and force, it gives forth fire. This is caught in proper materials, increased with straw, heath, and brushwood, till it creaks out into a full needfire; and this must he somewhat spread out lengthways between walls or fences, and the cattle and horses hunted with sticks and whips two or three times through it," etc. Various ways of arranging the apparatus are mentioned by Reiske and other authorities quoted by Grimm, such as fixing the spindle between two posts, etc. How the spindle is turned is sometimes doubtful; but in several places the Indian practice of driving it with a rope wound round it, and pulled backwards and forwards, comes clearly into view; while sometimes a cart wheel is spun round upon an axle; or a spindle is worked round with levers, or two planks are rubbed violently together, till the fire comes.

The needfire seems to have been kept up to late years in Germany. In Great Britain the most modern account I have met with dates from 1826. The 'Mirror' of June 24th of that year takes from the 'Perth Courier' a description of the rite, as performed not far from Perth, by a farmer who had lost several cattle by some disease:—"A few stones were piled together in the barn-yard, and wood-coals having been laid thereon, the fuel was ignited by will-fire, that is, fire obtained by friction: the neighbours having been called in to witness the solemnity, the cattle were made to pass through the flames, in the order of their dignity and age, commencing with the horses and ending with the swine."

Some varieties of the rite of the New Fire, connected with the Sun-worship so deeply rooted in the popular mind from before the time of the Vedas, were countenanced, or at least tolerated, by the Church. Such are the bonfires at Easter, Midsummer Eve, and some other times; and, in one case, there is ground for supposing that the old rite was taken up into the Roman Church, in the practice of putting out the church candles