Chapter 63. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals.
Section 1. On the Fire-festivals in general.
THE FOREGOING survey of the popular fire-festivals of Europe suggests
some general observations. In the first place we can hardly help being
struck by the resemblance which the ceremonies bear to each other, at
whatever time of the year and in whatever part of Europe they are
celebrated. The custom of kindling great bonfires, leaping over them, and
driving cattle through or round them would seem to have been practically
universal throughout Europe, and the same may be said of the processions
or races with blazing torches round fields, orchards, pastures, or
cattle-stalls. Less widespread are the customs of hurling lighted discs into
the air and trundling a burning wheel down hill. The ceremonial of the Yule
log is distinguished from that of the other fire-festivals by the privacy and
domesticity which characterise it; but this distinction may well be due
simply to the rough weather of midwinter, which is apt not only to render a
public assembly in the open air disagreeable, but also at any moment to
defeat the object of the assembly by extinguishing the all-important fire
under a downpour of rain or a fall of snow. Apart from these local or
seasonal differences, the general resemblance between the fire-festivals
at all times of the year and in all places is tolerably close. And as the
ceremonies themselves resemble each other, so do the benefits which the
people expect to reap from them. Whether applied in the form of bonfires
blazing at fixed points, or of torches carried about from place to place, or
of embers and ashes taken from the smouldering heap of fuel, the fire is
believed to promote the growth of the crops and the welfare of man and
beast, either positively by stimulating them, or negatively by averting the
dangers and calamities which threaten them from such causes as thunder
and lightning, conflagration, blight, mildew, vermin, sterility, disease, and
not least of all witchcraft. 1
But we naturally ask, How did it come about that benefits so great and
manifold were supposed to be attained by means so simple? In what way
did people imagine that they could procure so many goods or avoid so
many ills by the application of fire and smoke, of embers and ashes? Two
different explanations of the fire-festivals have been given by modern
enquirers. On the one hand it has been held that they are sun-charms or
magical ceremonies intended, on the principle of imitative magic, to ensure
a needful supply of sunshine for men, animals, and plants by kindling fires
which mimic on earth the great source of light and heat in the sky. This
was the view of Wilhelm Mannhardt. It may be called the solar theory. On
the other hand it has been maintained that the ceremonial fires have no
necessary reference to the sun but are simply purificatory in intention,
being designed to burn up and destroy all harmful influences, whether
these are conceived in a personal form as witches, demons, and monsters,
or in an impersonal form as a sort of pervading taint or corruption of the air.
This is the view of Dr. Edward Westermarck and apparently of Professor
Eugen Mogk. It may be called the purificatory theory. Obviously the two
theories postulate two very different conceptions of the fire which plays the
principal part in the rites. On the one view, the fire, like sunshine in our
latitude, is a genial creative power which fosters the growth of plants and
the development of all that makes for health and happiness; on the other
view, the fire is a fierce destructive power which blasts and consumes all
the noxious elements, whether spiritual or material, that menace the life of
men, of animals, and of plants. According to the one theory the fire is a
stimulant, according to the other it is a disinfectant; on the one view its
virtue is positive, on the other it is negative. 2
Yet the two explanations, different as they are in the character which
they attribute to the fire, are perhaps not wholly irreconcilable. If we
assume that the fires kindled at these festivals were primarily intended to
imitate the sun's light and heat, may we not regard the purificatory and
disinfecting qualities, which popular opinion certainly appears to have
ascribed to them, as attributes derived directly from the purificatory and
disinfecting qualities of sunshine? In this way we might conclude that,
while the imitation of sunshine in these ceremonies was primary and
original, the purification attributed to them was secondary and derivative.
Such a conclusion, occupying an intermediate position between the two
opposing theories and recognising an element of truth in both of them, was
adopted by me in earlier editions of this work; but in the meantime Dr.
Westermarck has argued powerfully in favour of the purificatory theory
alone, and I am bound to say that his arguments carry great weight, and
that on a fuller review of the facts the balance of evidence seems to me to
incline decidedly in his favour. However, the case is not so clear as to
justify us in dismissing the solar theory without discussion, and
accordingly I propose to adduce the considerations which tell for it before
proceeding to notice those which tell against it. A theory which had the
support of so learned and sagacious an investigator as W. Mannhardt is
entitled to a respectful hearing. 3
Section 2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals.
IN AN EARLIER part of this work we saw that savages resort to charms for
making sunshine, and it would be no wonder if primitive man in Europe did
the same. Indeed, when we consider the cold and cloudy climate of
Europe during a great part of the year, we shall find it natural that
sun-charms should have played a much more prominent part among the
superstitious practices of European peoples than among those of savages
who live nearer the equator and who consequently are apt to get in the
course of nature more sunshine than they want. This view of the festivals
may be supported by various arguments drawn partly from their dates,
partly from the nature of the rites, and partly from the influence which they
are believed to exert upon the weather and on vegetation. 1
First, in regard to the dates of the festivals it can be no mere accident
that two of the most important and widely spread of the festivals are timed
to coincide more or less exactly with the summer and winter solstices, that
is, with the two turning-points in the sun's apparent course in the sky
when he reaches respectively his highest and his lowest elevation at
noon. Indeed with respect to the midwinter celebration of Christmas we are
not left to conjecture; we know from the express testimony of the ancients
that it was instituted by the church to supersede an old heathen festival of
the birth of the sun, which was apparently conceived to be born again on
the shortest day of the year, after which his light and heat were seen to
grow till they attained their full maturity at midsummer. Therefore it is no
very far-fetched conjecture to suppose that the Yule log, which figures so
prominently in the popular celebration of Christmas, was originally
designed to help the labouring sun of midwinter to rekindle his seemingly
expiring light. 2
Not only the date of some of the festivals but the manner of their
celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun. The custom of rolling
a burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at these ceremonies,
might well pass for an imitation of the sun's course in the sky, and the
imitation would be especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the
sun's annual declension begins. Indeed the custom has been thus
interpreted by some of those who have recorded it. Not less graphic, it
may be said, is the mimicry of his apparent revolution by swinging a
burning tar-barrel round a pole. Again, the common practice of throwing
fiery discs, sometimes expressly said to be shaped like suns, into the air at
the festivals may well be a piece of imitative magic. In these, as in so
many cases, the magic force may be supposed to take effect through
mimicry or sympathy: by imitating the desired result you actually produce
it: by counterfeiting the sun's progress through the heavens you really help
the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality and despatch.
The name "fire of heaven," by which the midsummer fire is sometimes
popularly known, clearly implies a consciousness of a connexion between
the earthly and the heavenly flame. 3
Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally
kindled on these occasions has been alleged in support of the view that it
was intended to be a mock-sun. As some scholars have perceived, it is
highly probable that at the periodic festivals in former times fire was
universally obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood. It is still so
procured in some places both at the Easter and the Midsummer festivals,
and it is expressly said to have been formerly so procured at the Beltane
celebration both in Scotland and Wales. But what makes it nearly certain
that this was once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic
festivals is the analogy of the needfire, which has almost always been
produced by the friction of wood, and sometimes by the revolution of a
wheel. It is a plausible conjecture that the wheel employed for this purpose
represents the sun, and if the fires at the regularly recurring celebrations
were formerly produced in the same way, it might be regarded as a
confirmation of the view that they were originally sun-charms. In point of
fact there is, as Kuhn has indicated, some evidence to show that the
midsummer fire was originally thus produced. We have seen that many
Hungarian swine-herds make fire on Midsummer Eve by rotating a wheel
round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive their pigs through
the fire thus made. At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the "fire of heaven," as it
was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the fifteenth of June) by igniting
a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with straw, was
fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being inserted in
the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of a mountain,
and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of words, with
eyes and arms directed heavenward. Here the fixing of a wheel on a pole
and igniting it suggests that originally the fire was produced, as in the case
of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on which the
ceremony takes place (the fifteenth of June) is near midsummer; and we
have seen that in Masuren fire is, or used to be, actually made on
Midsummer Day by turning a wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it
is not said that the new fire so obtained is used to light a bonfire. However,
we must bear in mind that in all such cases the use of a wheel may be
merely a mechanical device to facilitate the operation of fire-making by
increasing the friction; it need not have any symbolical significance. 4
Further, the influence which these fires, whether periodic or occasional,
are supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may be cited in
support of the view that they are sun-charms, since the effects ascribed to
them resemble those of sunshine. Thus, the French belief that in a rainy
June the lighting of the midsummer bonfires will cause the rain to cease
appears to assume that they can disperse the dark clouds and make the
sun to break out in radiant glory, drying the wet earth and dripping trees.
Similarly the use of the need-fire by Swiss children on foggy days for the
purpose of clearing away the mist may very naturally be interpreted as a
sun-charm. In the Vosges Mountains the people believe that the
midsummer fires help to preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure good
crops. In Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season is inferred from
the direction in which the flames of the May Day bonfire are blown; if they
blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No doubt at present
the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury of the weather,
not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure that this is one
of the cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So in the Eifel
Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is an omen
that the harvest will be abundant. But the older view may have been not
merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that they actually
produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames acting like sunshine
on the corn. Perhaps it was with this view that people in the Isle of Man lit
fires to windward of their fields in order that the smoke might blow over
them. So in South Africa, about the month of April, the Matabeles light
huge fires to the windward of their gardens, "their idea being that the
smoke, by passing over the crops, will assist the ripening of them." Among
the Zulus also "medicine is burned on a fire placed to windward of the
garden, the fumigation which the plants in consequence receive being
held to improve the crop." Again, the idea of our European peasants that
the corn will grow well as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, may be
interpreted as a remnant of the belief in the quickening and fertilising
power of the bonfires. The same belief, it may be argued, reappears in the
notion that embers taken from the bonfires and inserted in the fields will
promote the growth of the crops, and it may be thought to underlie the
customs of sowing flax-seed in the direction in which the flames blow, of
mixing the ashes of the bonfire with the seed-corn at sowing, of scattering
the ashes by themselves over the field to fertilise it, and of incorporating a
piece of the Yule log in the plough to make the seeds thrive. The opinion
that the flax or hemp will grow as high as the flames rise or the people leap
over them belongs clearly to the same class of ideas. Again, at Konz, on
the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing wheel which was trundled down
the hillside reached the river without being extinguished, this was hailed
as a proof that the vintage would be abundant. So firmly was this belief
held that the successful performance of the ceremony entitled the villagers
to levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring vineyards. Here the
unextinguished wheel might be taken to represent an unclouded sun,
which in turn would portend an abundant vintage. So the waggon-load of
white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards round about
might pass for a payment for the sunshine which they had procured for the
grapes. Similarly in the Vale of Glamorgan a blazing wheel used to be
trundled down hill on Midsummer Day, and if the fire were extinguished
before the wheel reached the foot of the hill, the people expected a bad
harvest; whereas if the wheel kept alight all the way down and continued
to blaze for a long time, the farmers looked forward to heavy crops that
summer. Here, again, it is natural to suppose that the rustic mind traced a
direct connexion between the fire of the wheel and the fire of the sun, on
which the crops are dependent. 5
But in popular belief the quickening and fertilising influence of the
bonfires is not limited to the vegetable world; it extends also to animals.
This plainly appears from the Irish custom of driving barren cattle through
the midsummer fires, from the French belief that the Yule log steeped in
water helps cows to calve, from the French and Serbian notion that there
will be as many chickens, calves, lambs, and kids as there are sparks
struck out of the Yule log, from the French custom of putting the ashes of
the bonfires in the fowls' nests to make the hens lay eggs, and from the
German practice of mixing the ashes of the bonfires with the drink of cattle
in order to make the animals thrive. Further, there are clear indications that
even human fecundity is supposed to be promoted by the genial heat of
the fires. In Morocco the people think that childless couples can obtain
offspring by leaping over the midsummer bonfire. It is an Irish belief that a
girl who jumps thrice over the midsummer bonfire will soon marry and
become the mother of many children; in Flanders women leap over the
midsummer fires to ensure an easy delivery; in various parts of France
they think that if a girl dances round nine fires she will be sure to marry
within the year, and in Bohemia they fancy that she will do so if she
merely sees nine of the bonfires. On the other hand, in Lechrain people
say that if a young man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire
together, escape unsmirched, the young woman will not become a mother
within twelve months; the flames have not touched and fertilised her. In
parts of Switzerland and France the lighting of the Yule log is
accompanied by a prayer that the women may bear children, the
she-goats bring forth kids, and the ewes drop lambs. The rule observed in
some places that the bonfires should be kindled by the person who was
last married seems to belong to the same class of ideas, whether it be that
such a person is supposed to receive from, or to impart to, the fire a
generative and fertilising influence. The common practice of lovers leaping
over the fires hand in hand may very well have originated in a notion that
thereby their marriage would be blessed with offspring; and the like motive
would explain the custom which obliges couples married within the year to
dance to the light of torches. And the scenes of profligacy which appear to
have marked the midsummer celebration among the Esthonians, as they
once marked the celebration of May Day among ourselves, may have
sprung, not from the mere licence of holiday-makers, but from a crude
notion that such orgies were justified, if not required, by some mysterious
bond which linked the life of man to the courses of the heavens at this
turning-point of the year. 6
At the festivals which we are considering the custom of kindling bonfires
is commonly associated with a custom of carrying lighted torches about the
fields, the orchards, the pastures, the flocks and the herds; and we can
hardly doubt that the two customs are only two different ways of attaining
the same object, namely, the benefits which are believed to flow from the
fire, whether it be stationary or portable. Accordingly if we accept the solar
theory of the bonfires, we seem bound to apply it also to the torches; we
must suppose that the practice of marching or running with blazing torches
about the country is simply a means of diffusing far and wide the genial
influence of the sunshine of which these flickering flames are a feeble
imitation. In favour of this view it may be said that sometimes the torches
are carried about the fields for the express purpose of fertilising them, and
with the same intention live coals from the bonfires are sometimes placed
in the fields to prevent blight. On the eve of Twelfth Day in Normandy men,
women, and children run wildly through the fields and orchards with
lighted torches, which they wave about the branches and dash against the
trunks of the fruit-trees for the sake of burning the moss and driving away
the moles and field-mice. "They believe that the ceremony fulfills the
double object of exorcising the vermin whose multiplication would be a
real calamity, and of imparting fecundity to the trees, the fields, and even
the cattle"; and they imagine that the more the ceremony is prolonged, the
greater will be the crop of fruit next autumn. In Bohemia they say that the
corn will grow as high as they fling the blazing besoms into the air. Nor are
such notions confined to Europe. In Corea, a few days before the New
Year festival, the eunuchs of the palace swing burning torches, chanting
invocations the while, and this is supposed to ensure bountiful crops for
the next season. The custom of trundling a burning wheel over the fields,
which used to be observed in Poitou for the express purpose of fertilising
them, may be thought to embody the same idea in a still more graphic form;
since in this way the mock-sun itself, not merely its light and heat
represented by torches, is made actually to pass over the ground which is
to receive its quickening and kindly influence. Once more, the custom of
carrying lighted brands round cattle is plainly equivalent to driving the
animals through the bonfire; and if the bonfire is a suncharm, the torches
must be so also. 7
Section 3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals.
THUS far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at the
European fire-festivals the fire is kindled as a charm to ensure an
abundant supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and fruits. It
remains to consider what may be said against this theory and in favour of
the view that in these rites fire is employed not as a creative but as a
cleansing agent, which purifies men, animals, and plants by burning up
and consuming the noxious elements, whether material or spiritual, which
menace all living things with disease and death. 1
First, then, it is to be observed that the people who practise the
fire-customs appear never to allege the solar theory in explanation of
them, while on the contrary they do frequently and emphatically put
forward the purificatory theory. This is a strong argument in favour of the
purificatory and against the solar theory; for the popular explanation of a
popular custom is never to be rejected except for grave cause. And in the
present case there seems to be no adequate reason for rejecting it. The
conception of fire as a destructive agent, which can be turned to account
for the consumption of evil things, is so simple and obvious that it could
hardly escape the minds even of the rude peasantry with whom these
festivals originated. On the other hand the conception of fire as an
emanation of the sun, or at all events as linked to it by a bond of physical
sympathy, is far less simple and obvious; and though the use of fire as a
charm to produce sunshine appears to be undeniable, nevertheless in
attempting to explain popular customs we should never have recourse to a
more recondite idea when a simpler one lies to hand and is supported by
the explicit testimony of the people themselves. Now in the case of the
fire-festivals the destructive aspect of fire is one upon which the people
dwell again and again; and it is highly significant that the great evil against
which the fire is directed appears to be witchcraft. Again and again we are
told that the fires are intended to burn or repel the witches; and the
intention is sometimes graphically expressed by burning an effigy of a
witch in the fire. Hence, when we remember the great hold which the
dread of witchcraft has had on the popular European mind in all ages, we
may suspect that the primary intention of all these fire-festivals was simply
to destroy or at all events get rid of the witches, who were regarded as the
causes of nearly all the misfortunes and calamities that befall men, their
cattle, and their crops. 2
This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the
bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost,
perhaps, among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and of
all the ills that witches are believed to work there is probably none which
is so constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the herds, particularly
by stealing the milk from the cows. Now it is significant that the need-fire,
which may perhaps be regarded as the parent of the periodic
fire-festivals, is kindled above all as a remedy for a murrain or other
disease of cattle; and the circumstance suggests, what on general grounds
seems probable, that the custom of kindling the need-fire goes back to a
time when the ancestors of the European peoples subsisted chiefly on the
products of their herds, and when agriculture as yet played a subordinate
part in their lives. Witches and wolves are the two great foes still dreaded
by the herdsman in many parts of Europe; and we need not wonder that he
should resort to fire as a powerful means of banning them both. Among
Slavonic peoples it appears that the foes whom the need-fire is designed
to combat are not so much living witches as vampyres and other evil
spirits, and the ceremony aims rather at repelling these baleful beings than
at actually consuming them in the flames. But for our present purpose these
distinctions are immaterial. The important thing to observe is that among the
Slavs the need-fire, which is probably the original of all the ceremonial
fires now under consideration, is not a sun-charm, but clearly and
unmistakably nothing but a means of protecting man and beast against the
attacks of maleficent creatures, whom the peasant thinks to burn or scare
by the heat of the fire, just as he might burn or scare wild animals. 3
Again, the bonfires are often supposed to protect the fields against hail
and the homestead against thunder and lightning. But both hail and
thunderstorms are frequently thought to be caused by witches; hence the
fire which bans the witches necessarily serves at the same time as a
talisman against hail, thunder, and lightning. Further, brands taken from the
bonfires are commonly kept in the houses to guard them against
conflagration; and though this may perhaps be done on the principle of
homoeopathic magic, one fire being thought to act as a preventive of
another, it is also possible that the intention may be to keep
witch-incendiaries at bay. Again, people leap over the bonfires as a
preventive of colic, and look at the flames steadily in order to preserve
their eyes in good health; and both colic and sore eyes are in Germany,
and probably elsewhere, set down to the machinations of witches. Once
more, to leap over the midsummer fires or to circumambulate them is
thought to prevent a person from feeling pains in his back at reaping; and
in Germany such pains are called "witch-shots" and ascribed to
witchcraft. 4
But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be regarded
primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards, it becomes
probable that the same explanation applies not only to the flaming discs
which are hurled into the air, but also to the burning wheels which are
rolled down hill on these occasions; discs and wheels, we may suppose,
are alike intended to burn the witches who hover invisible in the air or
haunt unseen the fields, the orchards, and the vineyards on the hillside.
Certainly witches are constantly thought to ride through the air on
broomsticks or other equally convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how
can you get at them so effectually as by hurling lighted missiles, whether
discs, torches, or besoms, after them as they flit past overhead in the
gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes that witches ride in the dark
hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags, while he
curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy mother is a heathen,
damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood." Also he brings
out a pot of glowing charcoal on which he has thrown holy oil, laurel
leaves, and wormwood to make a smoke. The fumes are supposed to
ascend to the clouds and stupefy the witches, so that they tumble down to
earth. And in order that they may not fall soft, but may hurt themselves
very much, the yokel hastily brings out a chair and tilts it bottom up so that
the witch in falling may break her legs on the legs of the chair. Worse than
that, he cruelly lays scythes, bill-hooks, and other formidable weapons
edge upwards so as to cut and mangle the poor wretches when they drop
plump upon them from the clouds. 5
On this view the fertility supposed to follow the application of fire in the
form of bonfires, torches, discs, rolling wheels, and so forth, is not
conceived as resulting directly from an increase of solar heat which the
fire has magically generated; it is merely an indirect result obtained by
freeing the reproductive powers of plants and animals from the fatal
obstruction of witchcraft. And what is true of the reproduction of plants and
animals may hold good also of the fertility of the human sexes. The bonfires
are supposed to promote marriage and to procure offspring for childless
couples. This happy effect need not flow directly from any quickening or
fertilising energy in the fire; it may follow indirectly from the power of the
fire to remove those obstacles which the spells of witches and wizards
notoriously present to the union of man and wife. 6
On the whole, then, the theory of the purificatory virtue of the ceremonial
fires appears more probable and more in accordance with the evidence
than the opposing theory of their connexion with the sun. 7
