about in a circle until they burst into a bright glow, when straw is
applied to it, and the flaming straw used to kindle the brushwood which
has been stacked in piles in the hollow way. When this wood has blazed
up and the fire has nearly died out again, the people hasten to the
herds, which have been waiting in the background, and drive them
forcibly, one after the other, through the glow. As soon as all the
beasts are through, the young folk rush wildly at the ashes and cinders,
sprinkling and blackening each other with them; those who have been most
sprinkled and blackened march in triumph behind the cattle into the
village and do not wash themselves for a long time. If after long
rubbing the linen should not catch fire, they guess that there is still
fire somewhere in the village; then a strict search is made from house
to house, any fire that may be found is put out, and the householder is
punished or upbraided. The 'wild fire' must be made by prolonged
friction; it may not be struck with flint and steel. Some villages do
not prepare it yearly as a preventive of cattle-plague, but only kindle
it when the disease has actually broken out."[694] In the Halberstadt
district the ends of the rope which was used to make the cross-piece
revolve in the sockets had to be pulled by two chaste young men.[695]

[The mode of kindling the need-fire in the Mark.]

In the Mark down to the first half of the nineteenth century the
practice was similar. We read that "in many parts of the Mark there
still prevails on certain occasions the custom of kindling a need-fire,
it happens particularly when a farmer has sick pigs. Two posts of dry
wood are planted in the earth amid solemn silence before the sun rises,
and round these posts hempen ropes are pulled to and fro till the wood
kindles; whereupon the fire is fed with dry leaves and twigs and the
sick beasts are driven through it In some places the fire is produced by
the friction of an old cart-wheel."[696]

[The mode of kindling the need-fire in Mecklenburg]

In Mecklenburg the need-fire used to be lighted by the friction of a
rope wound about an oaken pole or by rubbing two boards against each
other. Having been thus elicited, the flame was fed with wood of seven
kinds. The practice was forbidden by Gustavus Adolphus, Duke of
Mecklenburg, in 1682; but the prohibition apparently had little effect,
for down to the end of the eighteenth century the custom was so common
that the in