[Persian festival of fire at the winter solstice.]

The Persians used to celebrate a festival of fire called Sada or Saza at the winter solstice.  On the longest night of the year they kindled bonfires everywhere, and kings and princes tied dry grass to the feet of birds and animals, set fire to the grass, and then let the birds and beasts fly or run blazing through the air or over the fields and mountains, so that the whole air and earth appeared to be on fire.[687]

Sec. 8. The Need-fire

[European festivals of fire in seasons of distress and calamity; the need-fire.]

The fire-festivals hitherto described are all celebrated periodically at certain stated times of the year.  But besides these regularly recurring celebrations the peasants in many parts of Europe have been wont from time immemorial to resort to a ritual of fire at irregular intervals in seasons of distress and calamity, above all when their cattle were attacked by epidemic disease.  No account of the popular European fire-festivals would be complete without some notice of these remarkable rites, which have all the greater claim on our attention because they may perhaps be regarded as the source and origin of all the other fire-festivals; certainly they must date from a very remote antiquity.  The general name by which they are known among the Teutonic peoples is need-fire.[688]

[The needfire in the Middle Ages; the needfire at Neustadt in 1598.]

The history of the need-fire can be traced back to early Middle Ages; for in the reign of Pippin, King of Franks, the practice of kindling need-fires was denounced as a heathen superstition by a synod of prelates and nobles held under the presidency of Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz.[689] Not long afterwards the custom was again forbidden, along with many more relics of expiring paganism, in an “Index of Superstitions and Heathenish Observances,” which has been usually referred to the year 743 A.D., though some scholars assign it a later date under the reign of Charlemagne.[690] In Germany the need-fires would seem to have been popular down to the second half of the nineteenth century.  Thus in the year 1598, when a fatal cattle-plague was raging at Neustadt, near Marburg, a wise man of the name of Joh.  Koehler induced the authorities of the town to adopt the following remedy.  A new waggon-wheel was taken and twirled round an axle, which had never been used before, until the friction elicited fire.  With this fire a bonfire was next kindled between the gates of the town, and all the cattle were driven through the smoke and flames.  Moreover, every householder had to rekindle the fire on his hearth by means of a light taken from the bonfire.  Strange to say, this salutary measure had no effect whatever in staying the cattle-plague, and seven years later the sapient Joh.  Koehler himself was burnt as a witch.  The farmers, whose pigs and cows had derived no benefit from the need-fire, perhaps