e of Lanercost for the year 1268. The annalist tells with
pious horror how, when an epidemic was raging in that year among the
cattle, "certain beastly men, monks in garb but not in mind, taught the
idiots of their country to make fire by the friction of wood and to set
up an image of Priapus, whereby they thought to succour the
animals."[720] The use of the need-fire is particularly attested for the
counties of Yorkshire and Northumberland. Thus in Yorkshire down to the
middle of the eighteenth century "the favourite remedy of the country
people, not only in the way of cure, but of prevention, was an odd one;
it was to smoke the cattle almost to suffocation, by kindling straw,
litter, and other combustible matter about them. The effects of this
mode of cure are not stated, but the most singular part of it was that
by which it was reported to have been discovered. An angel (says the
legend), descended into Yorkshire, and there set a large tree on fire;
the strange appearance of which or else the savour of the smoke, incited
the cattle around (some of which were infected) to draw near the
miracle, when they all either received an immediate cure or an absolute
prevention of the disorder. It is not affirmed that the angel staid to
speak to anybody, but only that he left a _written_ direction for the
neighbouring people to catch this supernatural fire, and to communicate
it from one to another with all possible speed throughout the country;
and in case it should be extinguished and utterly lost, that then new
fire, of equal virtue, might be obtained, not by any common method, but
by rubbing two pieces of wood together till they ignited. Upon what
foundation this story stood, is not exactly known, but it put the
farmers actually into a hurry of communicating flame and smoke from one
house to another with wonderful speed, making it run like wildfire over
the country."[721] Again, we read that "the father of the writer, who
died in 1843, in his seventy-ninth year, had a perfect remembrance of a
great number of persons, belonging to the upper and middle classes of
his native parish of Bowes, assembling on the banks of the river Greta
to work for need-fire. A disease among cattle, called the murrain, then
prevailed to a very great extent through that district of Yorkshire. The
cattle were made to pass through the smoke raised by this miraculous
fire, and their cure was looked upon as certain, and to neglect doing so
was looked upo