speed, making it run like wildfire over the country."[721] Again, we read that “the father of the writer, who died in 1843, in his seventy-ninth year, had a perfect remembrance of a great number of persons, belonging to the upper and middle classes of his native parish of Bowes, assembling on the banks of the river Greta to work for need-fire.  A disease among cattle, called the murrain, then prevailed to a very great extent through that district of Yorkshire.  The cattle were made to pass through the smoke raised by this miraculous fire, and their cure was looked upon as certain, and to neglect doing so was looked upon as wicked.  This fire was produced by the violent and continued friction of two dry pieces of wood until such time as it was thereby obtained.  ‘To work as though one was working for need-fire’ is a common proverb in the North of England."[722] At Ingleton, a small town nestling picturesquely at the foot of the high hill of Ingleborough in western Yorkshire, “within the last thirty years or so it was a common practice to kindle the so-called ‘Need-fire’ by rubbing two pieces of wood briskly together, and setting ablaze a large heap of sticks and brushwood, which were dispersed, and cattle then driven through the smoking brands.  This was thought to act as a charm against the spread or developement of the various ailments to which cattle are liable, and the farmers seem to have had great faith in it."[723] Writing about the middle of the nineteenth century, Kemble tells us that the will-fire or need-fire had been used in Devonshire for the purpose of staying a murrain within the memory of man.[724]

[The need-fire in Northumberland.]

So in Northumberland, down to the first half of the nineteenth century, “when a contagious disease enters among cattle, the fires are extinguished in the adjacent villages.  Two pieces of dried wood are then rubbed together until fire be produced; with this a quantity of straw is kindled, juniper is thrown into the flame, and the cattle are repeatedly driven through the smoke.  Part of the forced fire is sent to the neighbours, who again forward it to others, and, as great expedition is used, the fires may be seen blazing over a great extent of country in a very short space of time."[725] “It is strange,” says the antiquary William Henderson, writing about 1866, “to find the custom of lighting ‘need-fires’ on the occasion of epidemics among cattle still lingering among us, but so it is.  The vicar of Stamfordham writes thus respecting it:  ’When the murrain broke out among the cattle about eighteen years ago, this fire was produced by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, and was carried from place to place all through this district, as a charm against cattle taking the disease.  Bonfires were kindled with it, and the cattle driven into the smoke, where they were left for some time.  Many farmers hereabouts, I am informed, had the need-fire.’"[726]

[Martin’s account of the need-fire in the Highlands of Scotland.]