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612
ELEMENTS.
spokes: thet niugenspetze fial survives in the Frisian laws, those
nine oaken spindles whose friction against the nave produced fire
signify the nine spokes standing out of the nave, and the same
sacred number turns up again in the nine kinds of wood, in the
nine and eighty-one men that rub. We can hardly doubt that
the wheel when set on fire formed the nucleus and centre of a
holy and purifying sacrificial flame. Oar weisthiimer (2, 615-6.
693-7) have another remarkable custom to tell of. At the great
yearly assize a cartwheel, that had lain six weeks and three days
soaking in water (or a cesspool), was placed in a fire kindled
before the judges, and the banquet lasts till the nave, which must
on no account be turned or poked, be consumed to ashes. This
I take to be a last relic of the pagan sacrificial feast, and the
wheel to have been the means of generating the fire, of which it
is true there is nothing said. In any case we have here the use
of a cartwheel to feed a festal flame.
If the majority of the accounts quoted limit the use of need-
fire to an outbreak of murrain, yet some of them expressly inform
us that it was resorted to at stated times of the year, especially
Midsummer, and that the cattle were driven through the flames to
guard them beforehand against future sicknesses. Nicolaus Gryse
on St. John s
(Rostock 1593, liiia
) mentions as a regular practice
day : Toward
nightfall they warmed them by St. John s blaze
and need fire (nodfiir) that they sawed out of wood, kindling
the same not in God s name but St. John s; leapt and ran
and drave the cattle therethro 9
, and were fulfilled of thousand
joys whenas they had passed the night in great sins, shames
and harms.
Of this yearly recurrence we are assured both by the Lemnian
the Celtic. 1
worship, and more especially by It was in the great
gatherings at annual feasts that needfire was lighted. These the
Celtic nations kept at the beginning of May and of November.
The grand hightide was the Mayday ; I find it falling mostly on
the 1st of May, yet sometimes on the 2nd or 3rd. This day is
called in Irish and Gaelic la bealtine or beiltine, otherwise spelt
beltein, and corrupted into belton, beltim, beltam. La means day,
1
Hyde remarks of the Guebers also, that they lighted a fire every year.