fs as
this concerning the detachable soul or life survive in _Maerchen_, and
are still alive among savages.[936]

Folk-survivals show that a human or an animal representative of the
vegetation-spirit, brought into connection with the tree, was also slain
or burned along with the tree.[937] Thus the cutting of the mistletoe
would be regarded as a preliminary to the slaying of the human victim,
who, like the tree, was the representative of the spirit of vegetation.

The bonfire representing the sun, and the victims, like the tree,
representing the spirit of vegetation, it is obvious why the fire had
healing and fertilising powers, and why its ashes and the ashes or the
flesh of the victims possessed the same powers. Brands from the fire
were carried through the fields or villages, as the tree had been, or
placed on the fields or in houses, where they were carefully preserved
for a year. All this aided growth and prosperity, just as the smoke of
the fire, drifting over the fields, produced fertility. Ashes from the
fire, and probably the calcined bones or even the flesh of the victims,
were scattered on the fields or preserved and mixed with the seed corn.
Again, part of the flesh may have been eaten sacramentally, since, as
has been seen, Pliny refers to the belief of the Celts in the eating of
human flesh as most wholesome.

In the Stone Age, as with many savages, a circle typified the sun, and
as soon as the wheel was invented its rolling motion at once suggested
that of the sun. In the _Edda_ the sun is "the beautiful, the shining
wheel," and similar expressions occur in the _Vedas_. Among the Celts
the wheel of the sun was a favourite piece of symbolism, and this is
seen in various customs at the Midsummer festival. A burning wheel was
rolled down a slope or trundled through the fields, or burning brands
were whirled round so as to give the impression of a fiery wheel. The
intention was primarily to imitate the course of the sun through the
heavens, and so, on the principle of imitative magic, to strengthen it.
But also, as the wheel was rolled through the fields, so it was hoped
that the direct beneficial action of the sun upon them would follow.
Similar rites might be performed not only at Midsummer, but at other
times, to procure blessing or to ward off evil, e.g. carrying fire round
houses or fields or cattle or round a child _deiseil_ or sunwise,[938]
and, by a further extension of thought, the blazing wheel, o