e been observed in the time of the first dynasty, about two
thousand years before Christ. Under the Tcheou dynasty a change in the
calendar led to shifting the fire-festival from spring to the summer
solstice, but afterwards it was brought back to its original date.
Although the custom appears to have long fallen into disuse, the
barbarous inhabitants of Hainan, an island to the south of China, still
call a year "a fire," as if in memory of the time when the years were
reckoned by the annually recurring ceremony of rekindling the sacred
fire.[342] "A Japanese book written two centuries ago informs us that
sticks resembling the wands used for offerings at the purification
ceremony were part shaven and set up in bundles at the four corners of
the Gion shrine on the last day of the year. The priests, after prayers
were recited, broke up the bundles and set fire to the sticks, which the
people then carried home to light their household fires with for the New
Year. The object of this ceremony was to avert pestilence."[343]

[The new fire in ancient Greece and Rome.]

In classical antiquity the Greek island of Lemnos was devoted to the
worship of the smith-god Hephaestus, who was said to have fallen on it
when Zeus hurled him from heaven.[344] Once a year every fire in the
island was extinguished and remained extinct for nine days, during which
sacrifices were offered to the dead and to the infernal powers. New fire
was brought in a ship from the sacred isle of Delos, and with it the
fires in the houses and the workshops were relit. The people said that
with the new fire they made a new beginning of life. If the ship that
bore the sacred flame arrived too soon, it might not put in to shore,
but had to cruise in the offing till the nine days were expired.[345] At
Rome the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta was kindled anew every year
on the first of March, which used to be the beginning of the Roman
year;[346] the task of lighting it was entrusted to the Vestal Virgins,
and they performed it by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till
the flame was elicited by friction. The new fire thus produced was
carried into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze
sieve.[347]

[The new fire at Hallow E'en among the old Celts of Ireland; the new
fire on September 1st among the Russian peasants.]

Among the Celts of Ireland a new fire was annually kindled on Hallowe'en
or the Eve of Samhain, as they called it, the last