Christmas
Eve and New Year's Day.{22} The idea of the unluckiness of giving out
fire at the Kalends of January can be traced back to the eighth century
when, as we saw in Chapter VI., St. Boniface alluded to this superstition
among the people or Rome.

In Shropshire the idea is extended even to ashes, which must not be
thrown out of the house on Christmas Day, "for fear of throwing them in
Our Saviour's face." Perhaps such superstitions may originally have had
to do with dread that the "luck" of the family, the household spirit,
might be carried away with the gift of fire from the hearth.{23}

When Miss Burne wrote in the eighties there were still many West
Shropshire people who could remember seeing the "Christmas Brand" drawn
by horses to the farmhouse door, and placed at the back of the wide open
hearth, where the flame was made up in front of it. "The embers," says
one informant, "were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully
tended that it might not go out during the whole season, during which
time no light might either be struck, given, or borrowed." At Cleobury
Mortimer in the south-east of the county the silence of the curfew bell
during "the Christmas" points to a time when fires might not be
extinguished during that season.{24}

The place of the Yule log in Devonshire is taken by the "ashen [sometimes
"ashton"] faggot," still burnt in many a farm on Christmas Eve. The
sticks of ash are fastened together by ashen bands, and the traditional
custom is for a quart of cider to be called for and served to the
merrymaking company, as each band bursts in the flames.{25}

In England the Yule log was often supplemented or replaced |259| by a
great candle. At Ripon in the eighteenth century the chandlers sent their
customers large candles on Christmas Eve, and the coopers, logs of
wood.{26} Hampson, writing in 1841, says:--

"In some places candles are made of a particular kind, because the
candle that is lighted on Christmas Day must be so large as to burn
from the time of its ignition to the close of the day, otherwise it
will portend evil to the family for the ensuing year. The poor were
wont to present the rich with wax tapers, and yule candles are still
in the north of Scotland given by merchants to their customers. At
one time children at the village schools in Lancashire were required
to bring each a mould candle before the _parting_ or separation for
the Christmas