Section 2. The Lenten Fires.
THE CUSTOM of kindling bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent has
prevailed in Belgium, the north of France, and many parts of Germany.
Thus in the Belgian Ardennes for a week or a fortnight before the "day of
the great fire," as it is called, children go about from farm to farm collecting
fuel. At Grand Halleux any one who refuses their request is pursued next
day by the children, who try to blacken his face with the ashes of the
extinct fire. When the day has come, they cut down bushes, especially
juniper and broom, and in the evening great bonfires blaze on all the
heights. It is a common saying that seven bonfires should be seen if the
village is to be safe from conflagrations. If the Meuse happens to be frozen
hard at the time, bonfires are lit also on the ice. At Grand Halleux they set
up a pole called makral, or "the witch," in the midst of the pile, and the fire
is kindled by the man who was last married in the village. In the
neighbourhood of Morlanwelz a straw man is burnt in the fire. Young
people and children dance and sing round the bonfires, and leap over the
embers to secure good crops or a happy marriage within the year, or as a
means of guarding themselves against colic. In Brabant on the same
Sunday, down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, women and men
disguised in female attire used to go with burning torches to the fields,
where they danced and sang comic songs for the purpose, as they
alleged, of driving away "the wicked sower," who is mentioned in the
Gospel for the day. At Pâturages, in the province of Hainaut, down to
about 1840 the custom was observed under the name of Escouvion or
Scouvion. Every year on the first Sunday of Lent, which was called the
Day of the Little Scouvion, young folks and children used to run with
lighted torches through the gardens and orchards. As they ran they cried
at the pitch of their voices:
"Bear apples, bear pears, and cherries all black
To Scouvion!" 1
At these words the torch-bearer whirled his blazing brand and hurled it
among the branches of the apple-trees, the pear-trees, and the
cherry-trees. The next Sunday was called the Day of the Great Scouvion,
and the same race with lighted torches among the trees of the orchards
was repeated in the afternoon till darkness fell. 2
In the French department of the Ardennes the whole village used to
dance and sing around the bonfires which were lighted on the first Sunday
in Lent. Here, too, it was the person last married, sometimes a man and
sometimes a woman, who put the match to the fire. The custom is still kept
up very commonly in the district. Cats used to be burnt in the fire or
roasted to death by being held over it; and while they were burning the
shepherds drove their flocks through the smoke and flames as a sure
means of guarding them against sickness and witchcraft. In some
communes it was believed that the livelier the dance round the fire, the
better would be the crops that year. 3
In the French province of Franche-Comté, to the west of the Jura
Mountains, the first Sunday of Lent is known as the Sunday of the
Firebrands (Brandons), on account of the fires which it is customary to
kindle on that day. On the Saturday or the Sunday the village lads harness
themselves to a cart and drag it about the streets, stopping at the doors of
the houses where there are girls and begging fora faggot. When they have
got enough, they cart the fuel to a spot at some little distance from the
village, pile it up, and set it on fire. All the people of the parish come out to
see the bonfire. In some villages, when the bells have rung the Angelus,
the signal for the observance is given by cries of, "To the fire! to the fire!"
Lads, lasses, and children dance round the blaze, and when the flames
have died down they vie with each other in leaping over the red embers.
He or she who does so without singeing his or her garments will be
married within the year. Young folk also carry lighted torches about the
streets or the fields, and when they pass an orchard they cry out, "More
fruit than leaves!" Down to recent years at Laviron, in the department of
Doubs, it was the young married couples of the year who had charge of
the bonfires. In the midst of the bonfire a pole was planted with a wooden
figure of a cock fastened to the top. Then there were races, and the winner
received the cock as a prize. 4
In Auvergne fires are everywhere kindled on the evening of the first
Sunday in Lent. Every village, every hamlet, even every ward, every
isolated farm has its bonfire or figo, as it is called, which blazes up as the
shades of night are falling. The fires may be seen flaring on the heights
and in the plains; the people dance and sing round about them and leap
through the flames. Then they proceed to the ceremony of the
Grannas-mias. A granno-mio is a torch of straw fastened to the top of a
pole. When the pyre is half consumed, the bystanders kindle the torches at
the expiring flames and carry them into the neighbouring orchards, fields,
and gardens, wherever there are fruit-trees. As they march they sing at
the top of their voices, "Granno my friend, Granno my father, Granno my
mother." Then they pass the burning torches under the branches of every
tree, singing.
"Brando, brandounci tsaque brantso, in plan panei!"
that is, "Firebrand burn; every branch a basketful!" In some villages the
people also run across the sown fields and shake the ashes of the torches
on the ground; also they put some of the ashes in the fowls' nests, in order
that the hens may lay plenty of eggs throughout the year. When all these
ceremonies have been performed, everybody goes home and feasts; the
special dishes of the evening are fritters and pancakes. Here the
application of the fire to the fruit-trees, to the sown fields, and to the nests
of the poultry is clearly a charm intended to ensure fertility; and the Granno
to whom the invocations are addressed, and who gives his name to the
torches, may possibly be, as Dr. Pommerol suggests, no other than the
ancient Celtic god Grannus, whom the Romans identified with Apollo, and
whose worship is attested by inscriptions found not only in France but in
Scotland and on the Danube. 5
The custom of carrying lighted torches of straw (brandons) about the
orchards and fields to fertilise them on the first Sunday of Lent seems to
have been common in France, whether it was accompanied with the
practice of kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province of Picardy "on the
first Sunday of Lent people carried torches through the fields, exorcising
the field-mice, the darnel, and the smut. They imagined that they did much
good to the gardens and caused the onions to grow large. Children ran
about the fields, torch in hand, to make the land more fertile." At Verges, a
village between the Jura and the Combe d'Ain, the torches at this season
were kindled on the top of a mountain, and the bearers went to every
house in the village, demanding roasted peas and obliging all couples
who had been married within the year to dance. In Berry, a district of
Central France, it appears that bonfires are not lighted on this day, but
when the sun has set the whole population of the villages, armed with
blazing torches of straw, disperse over the country and scour the fields,
the vineyards, and the orchards. Seen from afar, the multitude of moving
lights, twinkling in the darkness, appear like will-o'-the-wisps chasing
each other across the plains, along the hillsides, and down the valleys.
While the men wave their flambeaus about the branches of the fruit-trees,
the women and children tie bands of wheaten-straw round the tree-trunks.
The effect of the ceremony is supposed to be to avert the various plagues
from which the fruits of the earth are apt to suffer; and the bands of straw
fastened round the stems of the trees are believed to render them
fruitful. 6
In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at the same season similar customs
have prevailed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on the first
Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood from
house to house. These they carried to an eminence and piled up round a
tall, slim beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at right
angles to form a cross. The structure was known as the "hut" or "castle."
Fire was set to it and the young people marched round the blazing "castle"
bareheaded, each carrying a lighted torch and praying aloud. Sometimes
a straw-man was burned in the "hut." People observed the direction in
which the smoke blew from the fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was
a sign that the harvest would be abundant. On the same day, in some
parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was made of straw and dragged by three
horses to the top of the hill. Thither the village boys marched at nightfall,
set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling down the slope. At Oberstattfeld the
wheel had to be provided by the young man who was last married. About
Echternach in Luxemburg the same ceremony is called "burning the
witch." At Voralberg in the Tyrol, on the first Sunday in Lent, a slender
young fir-tree is surrounded with a pile of straw and firewood. To the top
of the tree is fastened a human figure called the "witch," made of old
clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and
boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in
which the words "corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth"
may be distinguished. In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called
the "witch" or the "old wife" or "winter's grandmother" is made up of
clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of
wood, to which fire is applied. While the "witch" is burning, the young
people throw blazing discs into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of
wood, a few inches in diameter, with notched edges to imitate the rays of
the sun or stars. They have a hole in the middle, by which they are
attached to the end of a wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the
wand is swung to and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc
is augmented by dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The
burning disc is thus thrown off, and mounting high into the air, describes a
long fiery curve before it reaches the ground. The charred embers of the
burned "witch" and discs are taken home and planted in the flax-fields the
same night, in the belief that they will keep vermin from the fields. In the
Rhön Mountains, situated on the borders of Hesse and Bavaria, the people
used to march to the top of a hill or eminence on the first Sunday in Lent.
Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles
swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled
down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their
burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap, and
standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of
running about the fields with the blazing torches was to "drive away the
wicked sower." Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might
preserve the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless them. In
neighbouring villages of Hesse, between the Rhön and the Vogel
Mountains, it is thought that wherever the burning wheels roll, the fields
will be safe from hail and strom. 7
In Switzerland, also, it is or used to be customary to kindle bonfires on
high places on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent, and the day is
therefore popularly known as Spark Sunday. The custom prevailed, for
example, throughout the canton of Lucerne. Boys went about from house to
house begging for wood and straw, then piled the fuel on a conspicuous
mountain or hill round about a pole, which bore a straw effigy called "the
witch." At nightfall the pile was set on fire, and the young folks danced
wildly round it, some of them cracking whips or ringing bells; and when the
fire burned low enough, they leaped over it. This was called "burning the
witch." In some parts of the canton also they used to wrap old wheels in
straw and thorns, put a light to them, and send them rolling and blazing
down hill. The more bonfires could be seen sparkling and flaring in the
darkness, the more fruitful was the year expected to be; and the higher the
dancers leaped beside or over the fire, the higher, it was thought, would
grow the flax. In some districts it was the last married man or woman who
must kindle the bonfire. 8
It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the
first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the effigy
called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of "carrying out Death."
We have seen that at Spachendorf, in Austrian Silesia, on the morning of
Rupert's Day (Shrove Tuesday?), a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and
a fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that
while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he
fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his field,
believing that this will make the crops to grow better. The ceremony is
known as the "burying of Death." Even when the straw-man is not
designated as Death, the meaning of the observance is probably the same;
for the name Death, as I have tried to show, does not express the original
intention of the ceremony. At Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the lads make
up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday. The effigy is formally tried and
accused of having perpetrated all the thefts that have been committed in
the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being condemned to death, the
straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned upon a pyre. They
dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap over it. In
Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make long
bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields
waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burned a
straw-man on the field. In the district of Düsseldorf the straw-man burned
on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn. On the first
Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man
on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls carry
about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned. In the
district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday, a man used to be encased in
peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped quietly out
of his straw casing, which was then burned, the children thinking that it
was the man who was being burned. In the Val di Ledro (Tyrol) on the last
day of the Carnival a figure is made up of straw and brushwood and then
burned. The figure is called the Old Woman, and the ceremony "burning
the Old Woman." 9