Sometimes the need-fire was known as the “wild fire,” to distinguish it no doubt from the tame fire produced by more ordinary methods.  The following is Grimm’s account of the mode of kindling it which prevailed in some parts of Central Germany, particularly about Hildesheim, down apparently to the first half of the nineteenth century:  “In many places of Lower Saxony, especially among the mountains, the custom prevails of preparing the so-called ‘wild fire’ for the purpose of preventing cattle-plague; and through it first the pigs, then the cows, and last of all the geese are driven.  The proceedings on the occasion are as follows.  The principal farmers and parishioners assemble, and notice is served to every inhabitant to extinguish entirely all fire in his house, so that not even a spark remains alight in the whole village.  Then young and old repair to a road in a hollow, usually towards evening, the women carrying linen, and the men wood and tow.  Two oaken poles are driven into the ground about a foot and a half from each other.  Each pole has in the side facing the other a socket into which a cross-piece as thick as a man’s arm is fitted.  The sockets are stuffed with linen, and the cross-piece is rammed in as tight as possible, while the poles are bound together at the top by ropes.  A rope is wound about the round, smooth cross-piece, and the free ends of the rope at both sides are gripped by several persons, who pull the cross-piece to and fro with the utmost rapidity, till through the friction the linen in the sockets takes fire.  The sparks of the linen are immediately caught in tow or oakum and waved about in a circle until they burst into a bright glow, when straw is applied to it, and the flaming straw used to kindle the brushwood which has been stacked in piles in the hollow way.  When this wood has blazed up and the fire has nearly died out again, the people hasten to the herds, which have been waiting in the background, and drive them forcibly, one after the other, through the glow.  As soon as all the beasts are through, the young folk rush wildly at the ashes and cinders, sprinkling and blackening each other with them; those who have been most sprinkled and blackened march in triumph behind the cattle into the village and do not wash themselves for a long time.  If after long rubbing the linen should not catch fire, they guess that there is still fire somewhere in the village; then a strict search is made from house to house, any fire that may be found is put out, and the householder is punished or upbraided.  The ‘wild fire’ must be made by prolonged friction; it may not be struck with flint and steel.  Some villages do not prepare it yearly as a preventive of cattle-plague, but only kindle it when the disease has actually broken out."[694] In the Halberstadt district the ends of the rope which was used to make the cross-piece revolve in the sockets had to be pulled by two chaste young men.[695]

[The mode of kindling the need-fire in the Mark.]