[The Yule log in Germany; the Yule log in Switzerland.]

Among the Germans the custom of the Yule log is known to have been observed in the eleventh century; for in the year 1184 the parish priest of Ahlen, in Muensterland, spoke of “bringing a tree to kindle the festal fire at the Lord’s Nativity."[634] Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the old rite was kept up in some parts of central Germany, as we learn from an account of it given by a contemporary writer.  After mentioning the custom of feeding the cattle and shaking the fruit-trees on Christmas night, to make them bear fruit, he goes on as follows:  “Other customs pointing back to the far-off times of heathendom may still be met with among the old-fashioned peasants of the mountain regions.  Such is in the valleys of the Sieg and Lahn the practice of laying a new log as a foundation of the hearth.  A heavy block of oak-wood, generally a stump grubbed up from the ground, is fitted either into the floor of the hearth, or into a niche made for the purpose in the wall under the hook on which the kettle hangs.  When the fire on the hearth glows, this block of wood glows too, but it is so placed that it is hardly reduced to ashes within a year.  When the new foundation is laid, the remains of the old block are carefully taken out, ground to powder, and strewed over the fields during the Twelve Nights.  This, so people fancied, promotes the fruitfulness of the year’s crops."[635] In some parts of the Eifel Mountains, to the west of Coblentz, a log of wood called the Christbrand used to be placed on the hearth on Christmas Eve; and the charred remains of it on Twelfth Night were put in the corn-bin to keep the mice from devouring the corn.[636] At Weidenhausen and Girkshausen, in Westphalia, the practice was to withdraw the Yule log (Christbrand) from the fire so soon as it was slightly charred; it was then kept carefully to be replaced on the fire whenever a thunder-storm broke, because the people believed that lightning would not strike a house in which the Yule log was smouldering.[637] In some villages near Berleburg in Westphalia the old custom was to tie up the Yule log in the last sheaf cut at harvest.[638] On Christmas Eve the peasantry of the Oberland, in Meiningen, a province of Central Germany, used to put a great block of wood called the Christklots on the fire before they went to bed; it should burn all night, and the charred remains were believed to guard the house for the whole year against the risk of fire, burglary, and other misfortunes.[639] The Yule log seems to be known only in the French-speaking parts of Switzerland, where it goes by the usual French name of Buche de Noel.  In the Jura mountains of the canton of Bern, while the log is burning on the hearth the people sing a blessing over it as follows:—­

“May the log burn! 
May all good come in! 
May the women have children
And the sheep lambs! 
White bread for every one
And the vat full of wine!”