on Easter Eve, and lighting them again with consecrated new-made fire,—
"On Easter Eve the fire all is quencht in every place,
And fresh againe from out the flint is fetcht with solemne grace:
The priest doth halow this against great daungers many one,
A brande whereof doth every man with greedie mind take home,
That. when the feareful storme appeares, or tempest black arise,
By lighting this he safe may be from stroke of hurtful skies."[1]
Here the traces of the Indian mythology come out with beautiful clearness. The lightning is the fire that flies from the heavenly fire-churn, as the gods whirl it in the clouds. The New Fire is its representative on earth; and, like the thunderbolt, preserves from the lightning flash the house in which it is, for the lightning strikes no place twice.
It has been stated by Montanus that in very early times the perpetual lamps in churches were lighted by fire made by friction of dry wood.[2] But in the ceremony of later times the flint and steel has superseded the ancient friction-fire; and, indeed, the Western clergy, as a rule, discountenanced it as heathenish. In the Capitularies of Carloman, in the eighth century, there is a prohibition of "illos sacrilegos ignes quos niedfyr vocant."[3] The result of this opposition by the Church was, in great measure, to break the connexion between the old festivals of the Sun, which the Church allowed, and the lighting of the needfire, which is so closely connected with the Sun-worship in our ancient Aryan mythology. Still, even in Germany, there are documents that bring the two together. A glossary to the Capitularies says, "the rustic folks in many places in Germany, and indeed on the feast of St. John the Baptist, pull a stake from a hedge and bind a rope round it, which they pull hither and thither till it takes fire," etc.; and a Low German book of 1593 speaks of the "nodfüre, that they sawed out of wood" to light the St. John's bonfire, and through which the people leapt and ran, and drove their cattle.[4]
