[692]
[Method kindling the need fire.]
The method of kindling the need-fire is described as follows by a writer
towards the end of the seventeenth century: "When an evil plague has
broken out among the cattle, large and small, and the herds have thereby
suffered great ravages, the peasants resolve to light a need-fire. On a
day appointed there must be no single flame in any house nor on any
hearth. From every house a quantity of straw and water and underwood
must be brought forth; then a strong oaken pole is fixed firmly in the
earth, a hole is bored in it, and a wooden winch, well smeared with
pitch and tar, is inserted in the hole and turned round forcibly till
great heat and then fire is generated. The fire so produced is caught in
fuel and fed with straw, heath, and underwood till it bursts out into a
regular need-fire, which must then be somewhat spread out between walls
or fences, and the cattle and horses driven through it twice or thrice
with sticks and whips. Others set up two posts, each with a hole in it,
and insert a winch, along with old greasy rags, in the holes. Others use
a thick rope, collect nine kinds of wood, and keep them in violent
motion till fire leaps forth. Perhaps there may be other ways of
generating or kindling this fire, but they are all directed simply at
the cure of the cattle. After passing twice or thrice through the fire
the cattle are driven to their stalls or to pasture, and the heap of
wood that had been collected is destroyed, but in some places every
householder must take with him a brand, extinguish it in a washing-tub
or trough, and put it in the manger where the cattle are fed, where it
must lie for some time.
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