stored away to preserve a continuity of light and heat."[665] At the village of Wootton Wawen in Warwickshire, down to 1759 at least, the Yule-block, as it was called, was drawn into the house by a horse on Christmas Eve “as a foundation for the fire on Christmas Day, and according to the superstition of those times for the twelve days following, as the said block was not to be entirely reduced to ashes till that time had passed by."[666] As late as 1830, or thereabout, the scene of lighting the hearth-fire on Christmas Eve, to continue burning throughout the Christmas season, might have been witnessed in the secluded and beautiful hill-country of West Shropshire, from Chirbury and Worthen to Pulverbatch and Pontesbury.  The Christmas brand or brund, as they called it, was a great trunk of seasoned oak, holly, yew, or crab-tree, drawn by horses to the farm-house door and thence rolled by means of rollers and levers to the back of the wide open hearth, where the fire was made up in front of it.  The embers were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully tended, that it might not go out during the whole Christmas season.  All those days no light might be struck, given, or borrowed.  Such was the custom at Worthen in the early part of the nineteenth century.[667] In Herefordshire the Christmas feast “lasted for twelve days, and no work was done.  All houses were, and are now, decorated with sprigs of holly and ivy, which must not be brought in until Christmas Eve.  A Yule log, as large as the open hearth could accommodate, was brought into the kitchen of each farmhouse, and smaller ones were used in the cottages.  W——­ P——­ said he had seen a tree drawn into the kitchen at Kingstone Grange years ago by two cart horses; when it had been consumed a small portion was carefully kept to be used for lighting next year’s log.  ’Mother always kept it very carefully; she said it was lucky, and kept the house from fire and from lightning.’  It seems to have been the general practice to light it on Christmas Eve."[668] “In many parts of Wales it is still customary to keep part of the Yule-log until the following Christmas Eve ‘for luck.’  It is then put into the fireplace and burnt, but before it is consumed the new log is put on, and thus ‘the old fire and the new’ burn together.  In some families this is done from force of habit, and they cannot now tell why they do it; but in the past the observance of this custom was to keep witches away, and doubtless was a survival of fire-worship."[669]

[The Yule log in Servia; the cutting of the oak tree to form the Yule log.]

But nowhere, apparently, in Europe is the old heathen ritual of the Yule log preserved to the present day more perfectly than in Servia.  At early dawn on Christmas Eve (Badnyi Dan) every peasant house sends two of its strongest young men to the nearest forest to cut down a young oak tree and bring it home.  There, after offering up a short prayer or crossing themselves thrice, they throw a handful