d from the threshold of every house, the cattle are driven to a
cross-road, and there a tree, growing at the boundary, is felled by a
pair of twin brothers. The wood of the tree and the splinters from the
thresholds furnish the fuel of a bonfire, which is kindled by the
rubbing of two pieces of wood together. When the bonfire is ablaze, the
horns of the cattle are pared and the parings thrown into the flames,
after which the animals are driven through the fire. This is believed to
guard the herd against the plague.[704] The Germans of Western Bohemia
resort to similar measures for staying a murrain. You set up a post,
bore a hole in it, and insert in the hole a stick, which you have first
of all smeared with pitch and wrapt in inflammable stuffs. Then you wind
a rope round the stick and give the two ends of the rope to two persons
who must either be brothers or have the same baptismal name. They haul
the rope backwards and forwards so as to make the tarred stick revolve
rapidly, till the rope first smokes and then emits sparks. The sparks
are used to kindle a bonfire, through which the cattle are driven in the
usual way. And as usual no other fire may burn in the village while the
need-fire is being kindled; for otherwise the rope could not possibly be
ignited.[705] In Upper Austria sick pigs are reported to have been
driven through a need-fire about the beginning of the nineteenth
century.[706]

[The use the need-fire in Switzerland.]

The need-fire is still in use in some parts of Switzerland, but it seems
to have degenerated into a children's game and to be employed rather for
the dispersal of a mist than for the prevention or cure of
cattle-plague. In some cantons it goes by the name of "mist-healing,"
while in others it is called "butter-churning." On a misty or rainy day
a number of children will shut themselves up in a stable or byre and
proceed to make fire for the purpose of improving the weather. The way
in which they make it is this. A boy places a board against his breast,
takes a peg pointed at both ends, and, setting one end of the peg
against the board on his breast, presses the other end firmly against a
second board, the surface of which has been flaked into a nap. A string
is tied round the peg, and two other boys pull it to and fro, till
through the rapid motion of the point of the peg a hole is burnt in the
flaked board, to which tow or dry moss is then applied as a tinder. In
this way fire and smok