Notes from Armenia. 437
Our notes will show something more than the adoration and conservation of the New Fire.
In Moush, on the day in question, they burn wood, and from the smoke derive auguries of plenty or famine for the coming year. They keep the wood ashes and spread them on the fields to make them fruitful. They mix them with water and give the water to sick sheep ; they spread them on the sheep to make them multiply. Bridegrooms and brides jump over the fire (this means young married people, not necessarily persons of quite recent marriage). The people burn their own bodies with the fire, which is reckoned to be holy.
At Pirvan they call the Candlemas festival Moled (which appears to be a Syriac word, and to mean either " birthday," or else to be a causative term for what brings to birth). They build bonfires on the roofs of the houses and dance round them, the new bridegrooms of the year taking the lead. They knew nothing about making any use of the ashes from the bonfires. Their explanation of the custom was that " it came down from the time when we were fire- worshippers." But this is their common explanation for peculiar customs. At Egin they light candles in the church and on the roofs of the houses, and every house where there has been a wedding in the previous year has a big bonfire on the roof ; the new bridegrooms dance round the fire, and sometimes the brides dance round the fire also and jump over it. Children less than a year old are carried round the fire and songs are sung over them. Women belonging to houses where bonfires are made give away candles in church and elsewhere. They also give sweets. They do not make any use of the ashes from the bonfire.
At Ourfa the fire-festival is called Meled. There are bonfires everywhere — on roofs, in yards, &c. They call it the Burning of Winter.
From the foregoing, with the aid of the Golden Bough, it is easy to make parallels with other purificatory rites
