ndlemas, that is, on the second of February, or on the eve of that
festival. The materials of the bonfire are piled in an open space near a
church, and they are generally ignited by young couples who have been
married within the year. However, it is the bishop or his vicar who
lights the candles with which fire is set to the pile. All young married
pairs are expected to range themselves about the fire and to dance round
it. Young men leap over the flames, but girls and women content
themselves with going round them, while they pray to be preserved from
the itch and other skin-diseases. When the ceremony is over, the people
eagerly pick up charred sticks or ashes of the fire and preserve them or
scatter them on the four corners of the roof, in the cattle-stall, in
the garden, and on the pastures; for these holy sticks and ashes protect
men and cattle against disease, and fruit-trees against worms and
caterpillars. Omens, too, are drawn from the direction in which the wind
blows the flames and the smoke: if it carries them eastward, there is
hope of a good harvest; but if it inclines them westward, the people
fear that the crops will fail.[326]

[The new fire and the burning of Judas at Easter are probably relics of
paganism.]

In spite of the thin cloak of Christianity thrown over these customs by
representing the new fire as an emblem of Christ and the figure burned
in it as an effigy of Judas, we can hardly doubt that both practices are
of pagan origin. Neither of them has the authority of Christ or of his
disciples; but both of them have abundant analogies in popular custom
and superstition. Some instances of the practice of annually
extinguishing fires and relighting them from a new and sacred flame have
already come before us;[327] but a few examples may here be cited for
the sake of illustrating the wide diffusion of a custom which has found
its way into the ritual both of the Eastern and of the Western Church.

[The new fire at the summer solstice among the Incas of Peru;
the new fire among the Indians of Mexico and New Mexico; the new fire
among the Esquimaux.]

The Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Raymi, a word which their
native historian Garcilasso de la Vega tells us was equivalent to our
Easter. It was held in honour of the sun at the solstice in June. For
three days before the festival the people fasted, men did not sleep with
their wives, and no fires were lighted in Cuzco, the capital. The sa