5, quoting Rev. R.M.
Heanley, "The Vikings: traces of their Folklore in Marshland," a paper
read before the Viking Club, London, and printed in its _Saga-Book_,
vol. iii. Part i. Jan. 1902. The wicken-tree is the mountain-ash or
rowan free, which is a very efficient, or at all events a very popular
protective against witchcraft. See _County Folk-lore_, vol. v.
_Lincolnshire_, pp. 26 _sq._, 98 _sq._; Mabel Peacock, "The Folklore of
Lincolnshire," _Folk-lore_, xii. (1901) p. 175; J.G. Campbell,
_Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland_
(Glasgow, 1902), pp. 11 _sq._; Rev. Walter Gregor, _Notes on the
Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland_ (London, 1881), p. 188. See
further _The Scapegoat_, pp. 266 _sq_.

CHAPTER V

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRE-FESTIVALS

Sec. 1. _On the Fire-festivals in general_

[General resemblance of the European fire-festivals to each other.]

The foregoing survey of the popular fire-festivals of Europe suggests
some general observations. In the first place we can hardly help being
struck by the resemblance which the ceremonies bear to each other, at
whatever time of the year and in whatever part of Europe they are
celebrated. The custom of kindling great bonfires, leaping over them,
and driving cattle through or round them would seem to have been
practically universal throughout Europe, and the same may be said of the
processions or races with blazing torches round fields, orchards,
pastures, or cattle-stalls. Less widespread are the customs of hurling
lighted discs into the air[796] and trundling a burning wheel down
hill;[797] for to judge by the evidence which I have collected these
modes of distributing the beneficial influence of the fire have been
confined in the main to Central Europe. The ceremonial of the Yule log
is distinguished from that of the other fire-festivals by the privacy
and domesticity which characterize it; but, as we have already seen,
this distinction may well be due simply to the rough weather of
midwinter, which is apt not only to render a public assembly in the open
air disagreeable, but also at any moment to defeat the object of the
assembly by extinguishing the all-important fire under a downpour of
rain or a fall of snow. Apart from these local or seasonal differences,
the general resemblance between the fire-festivals at all times of the
year and in all places is tolerably close. And as the ceremonies
themselves resembl