"It was there," says the old Irish
historian, Geoffrey Keating, "that the Festival of the Fire of Tlactga
was ordered to be held, and it was thither that the Druids of Ireland
were wont to repair and to assemble, in solemn meeting, on the eve of
Samhain, for the purpose of making a sacrifice to all the gods. It was
in that fire at Tlactga, that their sacrifice was burnt; and it was made
obligatory, under pain of punishment, to extinguish all the fires of
Ireland, on that eve; and the men of Ireland were allowed to kindle no
other fire but that one; and for each of the other fires, which were all
to be lighted from it, the king of Munster was to receive a tax of a
_sgreball_, that is, of three pence, because the land, upon which
Tlactga was built, belongs to the portion of Meath which had been taken
from Munster."[348] In the villages near Moscow at the present time the
peasants put out all their fires on the eve of the first of September,
and next morning at sunrise a wise man or a wise woman rekindles them
with the help of muttered incantations and spells.[349]
[Thus the ceremony of the new fire in the Eastern and Western Church is
probably a relic of an old heathen rite.]
Instances of such practices might doubtless be multiplied, but the
foregoing examples may suffice to render it probable that the
ecclesiastical ceremony of lighting a sacred new fire on Easter Saturday
had originally nothing to do with Christianity, but is merely one case
of a world-wide custom which the Church has seen fit to incorporate in
its ritual.
Pages:
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259