put on
the fire before people go to bed, so that it may burn all through the
night. Its remains are kept to protect the house from fire and ill-luck.
In parts of Thuringia and in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, East Prussia,
Saxony, and Bohemia, the fire is kept up all night on Christmas or New
Year's Eve, and the ashes are used to rid cattle of vermin and protect
plants and fruit-trees from insects, while in the country between the
Sieg |257| and Lahn the powdered ashes of an oaken log are strewn
during the Thirteen Nights on the fields, to increase their
fertility.{18} In Sweden, too, some form of Yule log was known,{19} and
in Greece, as we have seen, the burning of a log is still supposed to be
a protection against _Kallikantzaroi_.

As for the English customs, they can hardly be better introduced than in
Herrick's words:--

"Come, bring, with a noise,
My merry, merry boys,
The Christmas Log to the firing:
While my good Dame she
Bids ye all be free,
And drink to your hearts' desiring.

With the last year's Brand
Light the new Block, and
For good success in his spending,
On your psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a-teending."[100]{20}

We may note especially that the block must be kindled with last year's
brand; here there is a distinct suggestion that the lighting of the log
at Christmas is a shrunken remnant of the keeping up of a perpetual fire,
the continuity being to some extent preserved by the use of a brand from
last year's blaze.

Another tradition and its origin are thus described by Sir Laurence
Gomme:--

"From there being an ever-burning fire, it has come to be that the
fire must not be allowed to be extinguished on the last day of the
old year, so that the old year's fire may last into the new year. In
Lanarkshire it is considered unlucky to give out a light to any one
on the morning of the new year, and therefore if the house-fire has
been allowed to become extinguished recourse must be had to the
embers of |258| the village pile [for on New Year's Eve a great
public bonfire is made]. In some places the self-extinction of the
yule-log at Christmas is portentous of evil."{21}

In the north of England in the days of tinder-boxes, if any one could not
get a light it was useless to ask a neighbour for one, so frightfully
unlucky was it to allow any light to leave the house between