"[721] Again, we read that "the father of the writer, who
died in 1843, in his seventy-ninth year, had a perfect remembrance of a
great number of persons, belonging to the upper and middle classes of
his native parish of Bowes, assembling on the banks of the river Greta
to work for need-fire. A disease among cattle, called the murrain, then
prevailed to a very great extent through that district of Yorkshire. The
cattle were made to pass through the smoke raised by this miraculous
fire, and their cure was looked upon as certain, and to neglect doing so
was looked upon as wicked. This fire was produced by the violent and
continued friction of two dry pieces of wood until such time as it was
thereby obtained. 'To work as though one was working for need-fire' is a
common proverb in the North of England."[722] At Ingleton, a small town
nestling picturesquely at the foot of the high hill of Ingleborough in
western Yorkshire, "within the last thirty years or so it was a common
practice to kindle the so-called 'Need-fire' by rubbing two pieces of
wood briskly together, and setting ablaze a large heap of sticks and
brushwood, which were dispersed, and cattle then driven through the
smoking brands. This was thought to act as a charm against the spread or
developement of the various ailments to which cattle are liable, and the
farmers seem to have had great faith in it."[723] Writing about the
middle of the nineteenth century, Kemble tells us that the will-fire or
need-fire had been used in Devonshire for the purpose of staying a
murrain within the memory of man.
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