[689] Not long afterwards the custom was again forbidden, along
with many more relics of expiring paganism, in an "Index of
Superstitions and Heathenish Observances," which has been usually
referred to the year 743 A.D., though some scholars assign it a later
date under the reign of Charlemagne.[690] In Germany the need-fires
would seem to have been popular down to the second half of the
nineteenth century. Thus in the year 1598, when a fatal cattle-plague
was raging at Neustadt, near Marburg, a wise man of the name of Joh.
Koehler induced the authorities of the town to adopt the following
remedy. A new waggon-wheel was taken and twirled round an axle, which
had never been used before, until the friction elicited fire. With this
fire a bonfire was next kindled between the gates of the town, and all
the cattle were driven through the smoke and flames. Moreover, every
householder had to rekindle the fire on his hearth by means of a light
taken from the bonfire. Strange to say, this salutary measure had no
effect whatever in staying the cattle-plague, and seven years later the
sapient Joh. Koehler himself was burnt as a witch. The farmers, whose
pigs and cows had derived no benefit from the need-fire, perhaps
assisted as spectators at the burning, and, while they shook their
heads, agreed among themselves that it served Joh. Koehler perfectly
right.[691] According to a writer who published his book about nine
years afterwards, some of the Germans, especially in the Wassgaw
mountains, confidently believed that a cattle-plague could be stayed by
driving the animals through a need-fire which had been kindled by the
violent friction of a pole on a quantity of dry oak wood; but it was a
necessary condition of success that all fires in the village should
previously be extinguished with water, and any householder who failed to
put out his fire was heavily fined.
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