anvil.[700] At Gandersheim down to about the beginning of the nineteenth century the need-fire was lit in the common way by causing a cross-bar to revolve rapidly on its axis between two upright posts.  The rope which produced the revolution of the bar had to be new, but it was if possible woven from threads taken from a gallows-rope, with which people had been hanged.  While the need-fire was being kindled in this fashion, every other fire in the town had to be put out; search was made through the houses, and any fire discovered to be burning was extinguished.  If in spite of every precaution no flame could be elicited by the friction of the rope, the failure was set down to witchcraft; but if the efforts were successful, a bonfire was lit with the new fire, and when the flames had died down, the sick swine were driven thrice through the glowing embers.[701] On the lower Rhine the need-fire is said to have been kindled by the friction of oak-wood on fir-wood, all fires in the village having been previously extinguished.  The bonfires so kindled were composed of wood of nine different sorts; there were three such bonfires, and the cattle were driven round them with great gravity and devotion.[702]

[The mode of kindling the need-fire in Silesia and Bohemia.]

In Silesia, also, need-fires were often employed for the purpose of curing a murrain or preventing its spread.  While all other lights within the boundaries were extinguished, the new fire was produced by the friction of nine kinds of wood, and the flame so obtained was used to kindle heaps of brushwood or straw to which every inhabitant had contributed.  Through these fires the cattle, both sick and sound, were driven in the confident expectation that thereby the sick would be healed and the sound saved from sickness.[703] When plague breaks out among the herds at Dobischwald, in Austrian Silesia, a splinter of wood is chipped from the threshold of every house, the cattle are driven to a cross-road, and there a tree, growing at the boundary, is felled by a pair of twin brothers.  The wood of the tree and the splinters from the thresholds furnish the fuel of a bonfire, which is kindled by the rubbing of two pieces of wood together.  When the bonfire is ablaze, the horns of the cattle are pared and the parings thrown into the flames, after which the animals are driven through the fire.  This is believed to guard the herd against the plague.[704] The Germans of Western Bohemia resort to similar measures for staying a murrain.  You set up a post, bore a hole in it, and insert in the hole a stick, which you have first of all smeared with pitch and wrapt in inflammable stuffs.  Then you wind a rope round the stick and give the two ends of the rope to two persons who must either be brothers or have the same baptismal name.  They haul the rope backwards and forwards so as to make the tarred stick revolve rapidly, till the rope first smokes and then emits sparks.  The sparks are used to kindle a bonfire, through which the cattle are driven in the usual way.  And as usual no other fire may burn in the village while the need-fire is being kindled; for otherwise the rope could not possibly be ignited.[705] In Upper Austria sick pigs are reported to have been driven through a need-fire about the beginning of the nineteenth century.[706]