]
The Persians used to celebrate a festival of fire called _Sada_ or
_Saza_ at the winter solstice. On the longest night of the year they
kindled bonfires everywhere, and kings and princes tied dry grass to the
feet of birds and animals, set fire to the grass, and then let the birds
and beasts fly or run blazing through the air or over the fields and
mountains, so that the whole air and earth appeared to be on fire.[687]
Sec. 8. _The Need-fire_
[European festivals of fire in seasons of distress and calamity; the
need-fire.]
The fire-festivals hitherto described are all celebrated periodically at
certain stated times of the year. But besides these regularly recurring
celebrations the peasants in many parts of Europe have been wont from
time immemorial to resort to a ritual of fire at irregular intervals in
seasons of distress and calamity, above all when their cattle were
attacked by epidemic disease. No account of the popular European
fire-festivals would be complete without some notice of these remarkable
rites, which have all the greater claim on our attention because they
may perhaps be regarded as the source and origin of all the other
fire-festivals; certainly they must date from a very remote antiquity.
The general name by which they are known among the Teutonic peoples is
need-fire.[688]
[The needfire in the Middle Ages; the needfire at Neustadt in 1598.]
The history of the need-fire can be traced back to early Middle Ages;
for in the reign of Pippin, King of Franks, the practice of kindling
need-fires was denounced as a heathen superstition by a synod of
prelates and nobles held under the presidency of Boniface, Archbishop of
Mainz.
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