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NEED-FIRE.
611
It is still more interesting to observe how nearly the old
Roman and Greek customs correspond. Excerpts from Festus
(0. Miiller 106, 2) say: ignis Vestae si quando interstinctus
esset, virgines verberibus afficiebantur a pontifice, quibus mos
erat, tabulam felicis materiae tarn diu terebrare, quousque exceptum
ignem cribro aeneo virgo in aedem ferret/ The sacred fire of
the goddess, once extinguished, was not to be rekindled, save by
generating the pure element anew. A plank of the choice
timber of sacred trees was bored, i.e. a pin turned round in it,
till it gave out sparks. The act of catching the fire in a
sieve, and so conveying it into the temple, is suggestive of a
similar carrying of water in a sieve, of which there is some
account to be given further on. Plutarch (in Numa 9) makes
out that new fire was obtained not by friction, but by in
tercepting the sun s rays in clay vessels destined for the pur
pose. The Greeks worshipped Hestia as the pure hearth-flame
itself. 1 But Lemnos, the island on which Zeus had flung down
the celestial fire-god Hephaestus, 3 harboured a fire-worship of
its own. Once a year every fire was extinguished for nine days,
till a ship brought some fresh from Delos off the sacred hearth of
Apollo : for some days it drifts on the sea without being
able to
land, but as soon as it runs in, there is fire served out to every
one for domestic use, and a new life begins. The old fire was no
longer holy enough ; by doing without it altogether for a time,
men would learn to set the true value on the element (see
Suppl.). 3 Like Vesta, St. Bridget of Ireland (d. 518 or 521)
had a perpetual fire maintained in honour of her near Kildare ; a
wattled fence went round it, which none but women durst ap
proach ; it was only permissible to blow it with bellows, not with
the mouth. 4 The mode of it is generating not recorded.
The wonderful amount of harmony in these accounts, and the
usages of needfire themselves, point back to a high antiquity.
The wheel seems to be an emblem of the sun, whence light and
fire proceed; I think it likely that it was provided with nine
1 Nee tu aliud Vestam quam vivam intellige flammam, Ov. Fast. 6, 295.
2 Ace. to the Finnish myth, the fire created by the gods falls on the sea in
balls, it is swallowed by a salmon, and men afterwards find it inside the fish when
caught. Runes pp. 6-22.
3
Philostr. Heroic, pp. 740. Welcker s Trilogie, pp. 247-8.
4 Acta sanctor., calend. Febr. p. 112".