Note (return) — Chapter IV

In Mecklenburg the need-fire used to be lighted by the friction of a rope wound about an oaken pole or by rubbing two boards against each other. Having been thus elicited, the flame was fed with wood of seven kinds. The practice was forbidden by Gustavus Adolphus, Duke of Mecklenburg, in 1682; but the prohibition apparently had little effect, for down to the end of the eighteenth century the custom was so common that the inhabitants even of large towns made no scruple of resorting to it. For example, in the month of July 1792 sickness broke out among the cattle belonging to the town of Sternberg; some of the beasts died suddenly, and so the people resolved to drive all the survivors through a need-fire. On the tenth day of July the magistrates issued a proclamation announcing that next morning before sunrise a need-fire would be kindled for the behoof of all the cattle of the town, and warning all the inhabitants against lighting fires in their kitchens that evening. So next morning very early, about two o'clock, nearly the whole population was astir, and having assembled outside one of the gates of the town they helped to drive the timid cattle, not without much ado, through three separate need-fires; after which they dispersed to their homes in the unalterable conviction that they had rescued the cattle from destruction. But to make assurance doubly sure they deemed it advisable to administer the rest of the ashes as a bolus to the animals. However, some people in Mecklenburg used to strew the ashes of the need-fire on fields for the purpose of protecting the crops against vermin. As late as June 1868 a traveller in Mecklenburg saw a couple of peasants sweating away at a rope, which they were pulling backwards and forwards so as to make a tarry roller revolve with great speed in the socket of an upright post. Asked what they were about, they vouchsafed no reply; but an old woman who appeared on the scene from a neighbouring cottage was more communicative. In the fulness of her heart she confided to the stranger that her pigs were sick, that the two taciturn bumpkins were her sons, who were busy extracting a need-fire from the roller, and that, when they succeeded, the flame would be used to ignite a heap of rags and brushwood, through which the ailing swine would be driven. She further explained that the persons who kindle a need-fire should always be two brothers or at least bear the same Christian name.697