Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore Part 3

And representative of the Unknown-- Who chose thee for his shadow!

_Byron._

Let us meditate on the adorable light of the divine ruler, (Savitri, the sun); may it guide our intellects.

_Vedic Hymn._

In his own image the Creator made, His own pure sunbeam quicken'd, thee, O man!

Thou breathing dial! Since thy day began The present hour was ever markt with shade.

_W. Savage Landor._

I have said that some remains of the fire wors.h.i.+p of Bel or Beil, until very recently, might be found in Lancas.h.i.+re and the North of England, as well as at present in Scotland and Ireland. Indeed, I am inclined to think certain English customs of the peasantry, at the present day, may, with perfect truthfulness, be referred to this source, although the original objects of the ceremonies may have been, either wholly or in part, obliterated by time, or obscured by the action of more recent rites and traditional observances.

Amongst these may be instanced a superst.i.tion prevalent in the North of England and many other places, that a funeral procession, when arrived at the churchyard, must move in the sun's course; that is, from east to west; otherwise evil resulted to the spirit of the departed. This sentiment is not confined to religious ceremonies, but is respected when pa.s.sing the bottle in convivial a.s.semblies; and in several other matters of ordinary every-day life. The fact that Brand, and most of the earlier writers after the Reformation, speak of these superst.i.tions as "Popish,"

in no way invalidates the a.s.signment to them of an Aryan origin. As early as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute the Great, we find laws strictly prohibiting the people from wors.h.i.+pping, or venerating, "the sun, moon, sacred groves and woods, and hallowed hills and fountains." Decrees were again and again p.r.o.nounced in vain against many of these practices by the ecclesiastical authorities. In the canons of the Northumberland clergy, quoted by Wilkins and Hallam, we read as follows:--

"If a king's thane deny this (_the practice of heathen superst.i.tion_), let twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred (or equals, _maga_), and twelve British strangers; and if he fail, then let him pay for his breach of law, twelve half-marcs: if a landowner (or lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken as for a royal thane; and if he fail, let him pay six half-marcs: If a ceorl deny it, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for the others; and if he fail, let him pay twelve orae for his breach of law."

This demonstrates that all cla.s.ses, whatever their rank, found it difficult to shake off the superst.i.tions of their forefathers. Some of them became amalgamated with more modern festive ceremonies, and were eventually intermingled with the formulae of the Christian wors.h.i.+p itself. Sir Jno. Lubbock, in his recent work, "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man," endorses this view. He says: "When man, either by natural progress, or the influence of a more advanced race, rises to the conception of a higher religion, _he still retains his old beliefs, which long linger on, side by side with_, and yet in utter opposition to, the higher creed. The new and more powerful spirit is an addition to the old Pantheon, and diminishes the importance of the older deities; gradually, the wors.h.i.+p of the latter sinks in the social scale, and becomes confined to the ignorant and the young. Thus a belief in witchcraft still flourishes among our agricultural labourers and the lowest cla.s.ses in our great cities, and the deities of our ancestors survive in the nursery tales of our children. We must, therefore, expect to find in each race, traces--nay, more than traces--of lower religions."

In the Irish Glossary of Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel, written in the beginning of the tenth century, the author says, in his time "four great fires were lighted up on the four great festivals of the Druids, viz., in February, May, August, and November." General Valancey says the Irish have discontinued their November fires and subst.i.tuted candles; while the Welsh, though they retain the fire, "can give no reason for the illumination." All Saints' Day is on the first of November, and its vigil is termed Allhalloween, or Nutcrack night. Those festivals had all reference to the seasons, and their influence on the fruitfulness of the earth. Brand says "it is customary on this night with young people in the north of England to dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs." Robert Burns tells us that Halloween is thought to be a "night when witches, devils, and other mischief making beings, are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those aerial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary." Scotch girls, on this evening, pull, blindfolded, cabbage stalks, in order to divine the size and figure of their future husbands.

Nuts are roasted or flung into the fire for a similar purpose both in Scotland and England. Gay describes the latter ceremony as follows:--

Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame, And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name; This with the _loudest bounce_ me sore amazed, That in a _flame of brightest colour_ blazed; _As blazed the nut so may thy pa.s.sion grow_, For 'twas thy nut that did so brightly glow!

We possess some interesting accounts of these gatherings in various parts of Scotland during the latter portion of the last century. In Perths.h.i.+re, heath, broom, and dressings of flax were tied to poles, lighted, and carried round the villages and fields. One minister says the people "set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire is consumed, the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle.

There is a stone put in near the circ.u.mference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire; and whatever stone is removed out of its place or injured before the next morning, the person represented by that stone is devoted, or _fey_, and is supposed not to live twelve months from that day. The people received the consecrated fire from the Druid priests next morning, the virtues of which were supposed to continue a year." A similar authority says, "the custom of making a fire in the fields, baking a consecrated cake, &c., on the 1st of May is not yet quite worn out."

In Derbys.h.i.+re these fires were called _Tindles_, and were kindled at the close of the last century. In some localities the ceremony is called a _Tinley_. Sir William Dugdale says, "On All-Hallow Even the master of the family anciently used to carry a bunch of straw, fired, about his corne, saying--

"Fire and red low Light on my _teen low_."

In Lancas.h.i.+re they are called _tandles_ and _teanlas_. In Ireland May-day eve is called _neen na Bealtina_, the eve of Bael fires. The practice of divination by the roasting of nuts is yet common in Lancas.h.i.+re. The hollow cinder, too, which leaps from a coal fire, is supposed to augur wealth or death to the person against whom it strikes, in proportion as its shape nearest resembles a purse or a coffin.

Mr. Thornber, the historian of Blackpool, and Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, of Burnley, author of a series of valuable papers on Lancas.h.i.+re superst.i.tions published in the "Transactions of the Lancas.h.i.+re and Ches.h.i.+re Historic Society," have furnished some curious information of a local character with reference to this ancient fire-wors.h.i.+p. The latter says:--"Such fires are still lighted in Lancas.h.i.+re, on Hallowe'en, under the names of Beltains or Teanleas; and even the _cakes_ which the Jews are said to have made in honour of the Queen of Heaven, are yet to be found at this season amongst the inhabitants of the banks of the Ribble.... Both the fires and cakes, however, are now connected with superst.i.tious notions respecting purgatory, &c., but their origin and perpetuation will scarcely admit of doubt." He further observes:--"The practice of 'causing children to pa.s.s through the fire to Moloch,' so strongly reprobated by the prophet of old, may be cited as an instance in which Christianity has not yet been able to efface all traces of one of the oldest forms of heathen wors.h.i.+p."

Mr. Thornber says:--"The conjoint wors.h.i.+p of the sun and moon, the Samen and Sama, husband and wife of nature, has been from these early times so firmly implanted that ages have not uprooted it. Christianity has not banished it.... In my youth, on Hallowe'en, under the name of Teanla fires, I have seen the hills throughout the country illuminated with sacred flames, and I can point out many a cairn of fire-broken stones--the high places of the votaries of Bel--where his rites have been performed on the borders of the Ribble age after age. Nor at this day are these mysteries silenced; with a burning whisp of straw at the point of a fork on Sama's festival at the eve of All-hallows, the farmer in some districts of the Fylde encircles his field to protect the coming crop from noxious weeds, the tare and darnel; the old wife refuses to sit the eggs under her crackling hen after sunset; the ignorant boy sits astride a stile, as he looks at the new moon; the bride walks not widders.h.i.+ns to church on her nuptial moon; and if the aged parent addresses not the young pair in the words of Hanno, the Carthaginian in the Pnula of Plautus, 'O that the good Bel-Samen may favour them,'

or, like the Irish peasant, 'The blessing of Sama and Bel go with you;'

still, we have often heard the benediction, 'May the sun s.h.i.+ne bright upon you,' in accordance with the old adage,

'Blest is the corpse the rain fell on, Blest the bride on whom the sun shone.'"

M. Du Chaillu, in his recent "Journey into Ashango-land and further penetration into Equatorial Africa," speaks of a certain superst.i.tious reverence for fire and faith in its medical virtues by the inhabitants of the region he traversed. He relates the following beautiful story respecting their astronomical notions:--"I was not always so solitary in taking my nightly observations, for sometimes one and another of my men or Mayola" (the king or chief), "would stand by me. Of course, I could never make them comprehend what I was doing. Sometimes I used to be amused by their ideas about the heavenly bodies. Like all other remarkable natural objects, they are the subject of whimsical myths amongst them. According to them, the sun and moon are of the same age, but the sun brings daylight and gladness and the moon brings darkness, witchcraft, and death--for death comes from sleep, and sleep commences in darkness. The sun and moon, they say, once got angry with each other, each one claiming to be the eldest. The moon said, 'Who are you, to dare to speak to me? You are alone; you have no people. What! are you to consider yourself equal to me? Look at me,' she continued, showing the stars s.h.i.+ning around her, 'these are my people; I am not alone in the world like you.' The sun answered, 'Oh, moon, you bring witchcraft, and it is you have killed all my people, or I should have as many attendants as you.' According to the negroes, people are more liable to die when the moon first makes her appearance and when she is last visible. They say that she calls the people her insects and devours them. The moon with them is the emblem of time and death."

The Teutonic tribes appear, contrary to the general faith of their Aryan kindred, to have regarded the sun as a female and the moon as a male deity. Palgrave, in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons," says:--"They had an odd notion that if they addressed that power as a G.o.ddess, their wives would be their masters."

I am strongly inclined to think that the continuance of the practice of lighting bonfires on the 5th of November owes quite as much to the a.s.sociations connected with the ancient teanla fires of Allhalloween, as to any present Protestant horror of the treason of Guy Fawkes and his band of conspirators. It may be quite true that the House of Commons, in February, 1605-6 did ordain that the 5th of November should be kept as "_a holiday_ FOR EVER in thankfulness to G.o.d for our deliverance, and detestation of the Papists;" but ordinances of this cla.s.s seldom produce more than a temporary excitement amongst large ma.s.ses of the people. I remember, in my youth, "a.s.sisting" at the celebration of several "bonfire days" in Preston and its neighbourhood, sometimes as amateur pyrotechnic artist, when we enjoyed our "fun" without any reference to Protestant or Catholic proclivities. Few, except the better educated, knew what the "Gunpowder Plot" really meant. Some a.s.sociated it mainly with our own pyrotechnic efforts and other attendant consumption of the explosive compound, on the then special occasion. I rather fancy the ancient November "Allhallow fires" have in their decadence, merged into the modern "Gunpowder Plot" bonfires; and hence the reason why, in some rural districts, they yet abound, while they are fast disappearing from our more populous towns. I was surprised to find, when riding on an omnibus from Manchester for about five miles on the Bury-road, on the evening of a recent anniversary of this "holiday," that I could count, near and on the horizon, fires of this description by the dozen, and yet, while in Manchester, I had remained ignorant of the fact that bonfire a.s.sociations were influencing the conduct of any section of society. The merging of one superst.i.tion, custom, habit, or tradition, into another, is one of the most ordinary facts of history.

Mr. Richard Edwards, in his "Land's End District," gives a very graphic account of the bonfires lighted up in Cornwall on _Midsummer eve_. Some of the details sufficiently resemble those of our northern "gunpowder plot" demonstrations to prove that a Guy Fawkes and an Act of Parliament are not absolutely necessary to make a bonfire festivity attractive to the descendants of the fire-wors.h.i.+ppers of old. He says:--

"On these eves a line of tar barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the princ.i.p.al streets in Penzance. On either side of this line, young men and women pa.s.s up and down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those of the tar barrels. Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm, are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets. In St.

Just and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their father's employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same substance. As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same little batteries serve for many years.... In the early part of the evening, children may be seen wreathing wreaths of flowers,--a custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when they danced around the fires. At the close of the fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both s.e.xes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in hand, forming a long string, and run through the streets, playing 'thread the needle,' heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and ofttimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have, on these occasions, seen boys following one another, jumping through flames higher than themselves. But while this is now done innocently, in every sense of the word, we all know that the pa.s.sing of children through fire was a very common act of idolatry; and the heathen believed that all persons, and all living things, submitted to this ordeal, would be preserved from evil throughout the year."

I remember well the bonfire processions during election periods, at Preston, above forty years ago, in the palmy days of the late Mr. Henry Hunt. It is not improbable that a remnant of the old superst.i.tion hovered about them; and that a latent belief in the "luck-bringing"

qualities of fire, to a slight extent, influenced their promoters.

A few years ago I visited, in company with Mr. Thornber, a field at Hardhorn, near Poulton, and was shown by that gentleman some of the stones yet remaining of what he has for many years regarded as the remains of a very ancient Teanlea cairn. Some of the stones bore marks of fire. The mound must, however, have been neglected for a length of time, inasmuch as the shrewd old farmer who had destroyed it had no recollection or traditionary knowledge respecting the use to which it had been appropriated. But from the ashes and other indications of fire which the upper portion of the cairn presented, the worthy husbandman felt confident that "it hed bin a blacksmith's forge i' th' olden time."

G.o.dfrey Higgins in his "Celtic Druids," a.s.serts, on the authority of Hayman Rooke, that "so late as the year 1786, the custom of lighting fires was continued at the Druid temple at Bramham, near Harrowgate, Yorks.h.i.+re, on the eve of the summer solstice." The Bramham crags referred to present a singularly curious specimen of the partial disintegration of huge rocks belonging to the millstone grit series.

Their present peculiar forms are not now attributed by the learned to human agency, in any marked degree at least, but to the denuding action of water, frost, and other geological conditions or phenomena.

Nevertheless, from the wild and even weird aspect of the group and its elevated site, it is by no means improbable that it has been used in early times as a place of wors.h.i.+p, or as the locality for the performance of superst.i.tious rites of the cla.s.s referred to. Doubtless, other localities of a similar character might be pointed out. "Beacon Fell," near "Parlick Pike," and the "Tandle Hills," near Rochdale, may have been used as places of public a.s.sembly, and for the performance of similar superst.i.tious observances. The same may be said of Ingleborough, which yet exhibits remains of Keltic occupation.

This fire-wors.h.i.+p, amongst a barbarous people, appears to have had by no means a strange or unnatural origin. Mr. Walter Kelly, after a very elaborate a.n.a.lysis, concludes that the Prometheus of the Greeks and the Vedic Matarisvan are "essentially the same." "The elder fire-G.o.ds, Agni and Rudra," he says, "had a troop of fire-kindling attendants, called Pramathas or Pramathas," and he regards Prometheus as the Greek form of this word. He calls attention to the fact that Diodorus says of the celebrated t.i.tan, that "according to the mythographers he stole fire from the G.o.ds, but that in reality he was the inventor of the fire-making instrument." The discoverer of the chark, or "fire-drill,"

an instrument for obtaining fire by artificial means, would be so great a benefactor to a people that had to suffer all the inconveniences resulting from occasional fireless hearths, that we may well understand why he should be invested by his astonished and delighted fellow-savages with miraculous or supernatural powers.[11] Doubtless the production of fire by the rubbing together of two pieces of dry timber preceded this discovery, but, under many circ.u.mstances, the operation must have been a most laborious one, and ofttimes impracticable. But with the "chark" the result was nearly as certain as when flint, steel, and tinder were employed for this purpose. It was a very simple instrument indeed, but it has nevertheless exercised a marvellous influence on the destinies of mankind. It consisted merely of a piece of soft dry wood with a hole drilled in its centre, into which a rod of hard wood, ash, or oak, was placed, and caused to revolve with rapidity by a cord, pa.s.sed round it, being pulled and slackened at each end alternately. A wheel and its axle have hence become types of the sun and the thunderbolt. Fire produced in this original way was considered sacred. Even the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Kelts, and some Christian populations until recent times, adopted the same or a similar process in the lighting of fires connected with religious ceremonies. Mr. Kelly says "the Church has not quite yet succeeded in effacing the vestiges of their heathen origin. This is especially evident in the usages of many districts, where the purity of the Easter fire (an idea borrowed from Pagan tradition) is secured by deriving the kindling flame either from the consecrated Easter candles, or from the new-born and perfectly pure element produced by the priest from flint and steel." The Vedic chark was made from the wood of two sacred trees; "the sami sprang from heavenly fire sent down to earth, and the asvattha from the vessel which contained it." Kelly adds:--"The idea of marriage, suggested by such a union of the two trees, is also developed in the Veda with great amplitude and minuteness of detail, and is a very prominent element in the whole cycle of myths connected with the chark." Doubtless, we have here exposed the root of the entire system of phallic wors.h.i.+p, stripped of much, if not all, of the grossness afterwards attendant upon it. It appears that amongst the Peruvians, who were sun-wors.h.i.+ppers, the great national festival was held at the summer solstice. They collected the rays of that luminary in a concave mirror, by which means they rekindled their fires. Sometimes, indeed, they obtained their "need-fire" by friction of wood. Amongst the Mexicans likewise grand religious celebrations took place at the close of the fifty-second year, when the extinguished fires were rekindled "by the friction of sticks." This is a very general practice amongst savage tribes at the present day. Mr. Angus says some of the western tribes of Australia "have no means of kindling fire. They say that it formerly came from the north." Should that of one tribe unfortunately become extinguished, there was nothing for it but journeying to a neighbouring encampment and borrowing a light. The Tasmanians are in the same predicament. The Fegeeans obtain fire by friction. So do other South Sea Islanders, as well as many of the North American Indians. The Dacotahs and Iroquois use an instrument not unlike the drilling bow at present employed for a certain cla.s.s of work in Europe. According to Father Gabian, fire was utterly unknown to the natives of the Ladrone Islands "till Magellan, provoked by their repeated thefts, burned one of their villages. When they saw their wooden houses blazing, they first thought the fire a beast which fed upon wood, and some of them, who came too near, being burnt, the rest stood afar off, lest they should be devoured or poisoned by this powerful animal."

The practice of kindling original or "need-fire" from a superst.i.tious reverence of its sacred character, is yet very common in various parts of Germany, Scotland, and Ireland, and even in England. Mr. Kemble quotes, from the Lanercost Chronicle, of the year 1268, a denunciation by the pious writer, of a practice which "certain b.e.s.t.i.a.l persons, monks in garb but not in mind," had taught the ignorant peasantry. This practice consisted in the extraction of fire from wood by friction, and the setting up of what he styles a "simulacrum Priapi," with a view to protect their cattle from disease. This image of Priapus is supposed to refer to the sun-G.o.d Fro or Fricco, who, according to Wolf, was wors.h.i.+pped until a very recent period in Belgium, under the form of Priapus. Priapus, the G.o.d of gardens or fertility, was the son of Bacchus and Venus. In the more mountainous portions of Wales a remnant of evidently heathen image-wors.h.i.+p, of a somewhat similar character, survived till relatively modern times. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, an idol, or what old Fuller calls "a great lubberly image," was removed from the diocese of St. Asaph, and publicly burnt in Smithfield. This image was known by the name of "Darvell Gatheron;" and it was said that the country people were in the habit of sacrificing oxen and sheep to it. Hence its condemnation by the church authorities.

Grimm refers to a remarkable instance of this superst.i.tion, which occurred in the island of Mull as recently as 1767, which vividly ill.u.s.trates the "toughness" of tradition, as Dasent expresses it. He says:--"In consequence of a disease amongst the black cattle, the people agreed to perform an incantation, though they esteemed it a wicked thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles, long enough to produce fire by friction. If the fire were not produced before noon, the incantation lost its effect. They failed for several days running. They attributed this failure to the obstinacy of one householder, who would not let his fires be put out for what he considered so wrong a purpose. However, by bribing his servants, they contrived to have them extinguished, and on that morning raised their fire. They then sacrificed a heifer, cutting in pieces and burning, while yet alive, the diseased part. They then lighted their own hearths from the pile, and ended by feasting on the remains. Words of incantation were repeated by an old man from Morven, who came as the master of the ceremonies, and who continued speaking all the time the fire was being raised. This man was living a beggar at Bellochroy. Asked to repeat the spell, he said the sin of repeating it once had brought him to beggary, and that he dared not say those words again." Many other instances might be cited in Scotland and Ireland: but the one most to the present purpose is related by Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, in which a Lancas.h.i.+re man "unconsciously resorted to the old wors.h.i.+p of Baal, and consumed a live calf in a fire, in order to counteract the influences of his unknown enemies." This individual was well known to Mr. Wilkinson.

He firmly believed that witchcraft was at the root of all his troubles, and that his cattle had died in consequence of its spells. It appears he had previously tried the famous Lancas.h.i.+re expedient to render his stables and s.h.i.+ppons proof against his supernatural enemies--the nailing of horseshoes on all his doors--without obtaining the desired result; so, in desperation, knowing the tradition, he sacrificed a living calf to the fire-G.o.d Bel!

The following paragraph appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, on the 29th of June, 1867:--

"The accounts given by the Irish newspapers of the extent to which the old superst.i.tion of fire-lighting on Midsummer eve still prevails show how slowly the relics of Paganism disappear among country people, and how natural it was that the old idolatries should come at last to be known as the creed of the 'Pagana,' the dwellers in villages. These Midsummer fires, lighted annually on the hills, are simply relics of the wors.h.i.+p of Bel. Beltane-day, or Belteine, is still a May-day as well as a Midsummer festival in the more ignorant districts of Scotland as well as of Ireland, and similar superst.i.tious practices are connected with the lighting of the fires; and, what is still more remarkable, the word is still used in some Scotch almanacs as a term well-known to everybody.

In a number of the _Scotsman_ a few years ago appeared the announcement that 'On Beltane-day Mr. Robertson was elected convener of the Trades of Cannongate in Edinburgh.' The next year the following is to be found:--'On Beltane-day the weavers, dyers, etc., of the Cannongate re-elected their office bearers.'"[12]

The records of the Presbytery of Dingwall show that as recently as the latter portion of the seventeenth century, on the island of Innis Maree, in Loch Maree, bulls were offered up as a sacrifice, and milk offered on the hill sides as a libation. In the year 1678, the Presbytery took action against some of the Mackenzie family, "for sacrificing a bull in a heathenish manner, in the island of St. Rufus, for the recovery of the health of Cirstane Mackenzie, who was formerly sick and valetudinarie."

Mr. Henderson, in his "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties," mentions an instance, "within fifteen years ago," of "a herd of cattle, in that county (Moray) being attacked with fever," when, "one of them was sacrificed by burning alive, as a propitiatory offering for the rest."

Mr. Robert Hunt, in his "Drolls, Traditions, and Superst.i.tions of Old Cornwall," published in 1865, says that he has been informed "that within the last few years a calf has been thus sacrificed by a farmer in a district where churches, chapels, and schools abound." He afterwards adds:--"While correcting these sheets I am informed of two recent instances of this superst.i.tion. One of them was the sacrifice of a calf by a farmer near Pontreath, for the purpose of removing a disease which had long followed his horses and cows. The other was the burning of a living lamb, to save, as the farmer said, 'his flocks from spells which had been cast on 'em.'"

The Midsummer fires, at the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and the yule log ceremonies at Christmas, may be referred to a similar origin. Brand says:--"The Pagan rites of this festival (Midsummer Eve) at the summer solstice may be considered as a counterpart of those used at the winter solstice at Yule-tide." The wheel, the type of the sun, was common to both festivities. Darand describes the practice, at the feast of St.

John, of rolling about a wheel, "to signify that the sun, then occupying the highest place in the zodiac, was beginning to descend." The old poet, Naogeorgus, describes the wheel as being covered with straw, which was set on fire at the top of a high mountain, and then despatched on its downward course. He adds that the people imagined all their ill luck accompanied the wheel in its descent.

The writer of the old homily _De Festo Sancti Johannis Baptistae_, when referring to these observances, speaks of three fires being kindled, one of which was called "a Bone fire; another is clene woode and no bones, and that is called a Wode fire, for people to sit and wake thereby; the third is made of wode and bones, and is called Saynt Johanny's Fyre.[13]

The first fyre, as a great clerke, Johan Belleth, telleth he saw in a certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete the which causid that dragons to go together in tokenynge that Johan dyed in brennynge love and charyte of G.o.d and man.... Then as these dragons flewe in th' ayre, they shed down to the water froth of ther Kynde, and so envenymed the waters, and caused moche people for to take theyr deth thereby, and many dyverse sykenesse. Wyse clerkes knoweth well that dragons hate nothyng more than the stenche of brennynge bones, and therefore they gaderyd as many as they mighte fynde, and brent them; and so with the stenche thereof they drove away the dragons, and so they were brought out of greete dysease."

Brand regards this as a "pleasant piece of absurdity;" but it appears that the quaint old writer, after all, is but relating that which was believed to be true in his own age, and which after-gained knowledge enables us to distinguish as a remnant of the old Aryan superst.i.tion or myth, in a mediaeval dress. These rolling fiery wheels, burning brands, bonfires, and processions round fields, &c., are common to both the Keltic and Teutonic branches of the Aryan race, and have evidently a similar origin. Kemble quotes an ancient Latin MS., which he found among the Harleian collection, which gives a precisely similar description of the St. John's fires. It is not improbable that it may have been written by the "learned clerke Johan Belleth," to whom the writer of the homily refers. Walter Kelly, speaking of it says, "Here we have again the primitive Aryan dragon Ahi, at his old work in the sultry midsummer weather." He contends that all the details referred to, as attendant on the St. John's fires, have been demonstrated by Dr. Kuhn to be "in striking accordance with the Vedic legend of Indra's fight with the midsummer demons. The pa.s.sage quoted by Kemble, besides stating expressly that the course of the blazing wheel was meant to represent the descent of the sun from its solst.i.tial height, brings the St. John's fires in immediate connection with the dragons that poison the waters, just as did the demon Vritra, otherwise called Ahi, the dragon. He possessed himself of the sun-wheel and the treasures of Heaven, seized the (white) women, kept them prisoners in his cavern, and laid a curse on the waters, until Indra released the captives and took off the curse.

The same conception is repeated in countless legends of mountains that open on St. John's day, when the imprisoned white women come forth, and the hour approaches in which the spell laid upon them and upon the buried treasures will be broken.... Here we see at once that the German"

(and Keltic) "custom was nothing else than a dramatic representation of the great elemental battle portrayed in the sacred books of the southern Aryans. In the one the blazing wheel stands on the top of the hill, in the other the sun stands on the summit of the cloud mountain. Both descend from their heights, and both are extinguished, the sun in the cloud sea, behind the cloud mountain, the wheel in the river at the foot of the hill." One name given to a combatant on the dragon's side is Kuyava, which is interpreted the "harvest spoiler, or the spoiled harvest." The following pa.s.sage in the Rig Veda is uttered by Indra, when he resolves to destroy the monster,--"Friend Vishnu, stride vastly; sky give room for the thunderbolt to strike; let us slay Vritra and let loose the waters." His wors.h.i.+ppers likewise exclaim,--"When, thunderer, thou didst by thy might slay Vritra, who stopped up the streams, then thy dear steeds grew."

The Rev. G. W. c.o.x says:--"The Nemean lion is the offspring of Typhon, Orthros, or Echidna; in other words it is sprung from Vritra, the dark thief, and Ahi, the throttling snake of darkness, and it is as surely slain by Heracles as the snakes which had a.s.saulted him in his cradle.

Another child of the same horrid parents is the Lernaian Hydra, its very name denoting a monster who, like the Sphinx or the Panis, shuts up the waters and causes drought. It has many heads, one being immortal, as the storm must constantly supply new clouds, while the vapours are driven off by the sun into s.p.a.ce. Hence the story went that although Heracles could burn away its mortal heads, as the sun burns up the clouds, still he can but hide away the mist or vapour itself, which at its appointed time must again darken the sky."

Dr. Kuhn contends that the clothing of wheels with straw and the extinguis.h.i.+ng of them when set on fire by immersion in a river, as is done in the vine-growing districts of Germany, with the view to secure a good harvest, is to be referred to this source. In support of his view, he enters into an elaborate philological argument to show that _yava_ must have originally meant gra.s.s in general, afterwards cereal gra.s.ses, and that its root gave birth to the name of the grain from which the oldest bread-stuff known was made. He says--"But I go still further, and I believe that _Kuyava_ was also regarded as the spoiler of vegetation in general, who parched up the plants used in making the fermented liquor, soma, and amongst these plants the Hindus included _yava_, which, in this case, meant barley or rice. It will be seen in the sequel that the demon possesses himself also of the heavenly soma (the moisture of the clouds), that he is robbed of it by Indra, and that the like conception is found also among the Greeks and the Germans. This, then, sufficiently explains the hope of a good wine year, which was a.s.sociated with the victory in the above-described German customs."