e precious virtue of the need-fire. In the villages
of the Droemling district everybody who bore a hand in kindling the "wild
fire" must have the same Christian name; otherwise they laboured in
vain. The fire was produced by the friction of a rope round the beams of
a door; and bread, corn, and old boots contributed their mites to swell
the blaze through which the pigs as usual were driven. In one place,
apparently not far from Wolfenbuettel, the needfire is said to have been
kindled, contrary to custom, by the smith striking a spark from the cold
anvil.[700] At Gandersheim down to about the beginning of the nineteenth
century the need-fire was lit in the common way by causing a cross-bar
to revolve rapidly on its axis between two upright posts. The rope which
produced the revolution of the bar had to be new, but it was if possible
woven from threads taken from a gallows-rope, with which people had been
hanged. While the need-fire was being kindled in this fashion, every
other fire in the town had to be put out; search was made through the
houses, and any fire discovered to be burning was extinguished. If in
spite of every precaution no flame could be elicited by the friction of
the rope, the failure was set down to witchcraft; but if the efforts
were successful, a bonfire was lit with the new fire, and when the
flames had died down, the sick swine were driven thrice through the
glowing embers.[701] On the lower Rhine the need-fire is said to have
been kindled by the friction of oak-wood on fir-wood, all fires in the
village having been previously extinguished. The bonfires so kindled
were composed of wood of nine different sorts; there were three such
bonfires, and the cattle were driven round them with great gravity and
devotion.[702]

[The mode of kindling the need-fire in Silesia and Bohemia.]

In Silesia, also, need-fires were often employed for the purpose of
curing a murrain or preventing its spread. While all other lights within
the boundaries were extinguished, the new fire was produced by the
friction of nine kinds of wood, and the flame so obtained was used to
kindle heaps of brushwood or straw to which every inhabitant had
contributed. Through these fires the cattle, both sick and sound, were
driven in the confident expectation that thereby the sick would be
healed and the sound saved from sickness.[703] When plague breaks out
among the herds at Dobischwald, in Austrian Silesia, a splinter of wood
is chippe