n effect of witchcraft.]

This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the
bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost,
perhaps, among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and of
all the ills that witches are believed to work there is probably none
which is so constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the herds,
particularly by stealing the milk from the cows.[861] Now it is
significant that the need-fire, which may perhaps be regarded as the
parent of the periodic fire-festivals, is kindled above all as a remedy
for a murrain or other disease of cattle; and the circumstance suggests,
what on general grounds seems probable, that the custom of kindling the
need-fire goes back to a time when the ancestors of the European peoples
subsisted chiefly on the products of their herds, and when agriculture
as yet played a subordinate part in their lives. Witches and wolves are
the two great foes still dreaded by the herdsman in many parts of
Europe;[862] and we need not wonder that he should resort to fire as a
powerful means of banning them both. Among Slavonic peoples it appears
that the foes whom the need-fire is designed to combat are not so much
living witches as vampyres and other evil spirits,[863] and the
ceremony, as we saw, aims rather at repelling these baleful beings than
at actually consuming them in the flames. But for our present purpose
these distinctions are immaterial. The important thing to observe is
that among the Slavs the need-fire, which is probably the original of
all the ceremonial fires now under consideration, is not a sun-charm,
but clearly and unmistakably nothing but a means of protecting man and
beast against the attacks of maleficent creatures, whom the peasant
thinks to burn or scare by the heat of the fire, just as he might burn
or scare wild animals.

[Again, the bonfires are thought to avert hail, thunder, lightning, and
other maladies, all of which are attributed to the maleficent arts of
witches.]

Again, the bonfires are often supposed to protect the fields against
hail[864] and the homestead against thunder and lightning.[865] But both
hail and thunderstorms are frequently thought to be caused by
witches;[866] hence the fire which bans the witches necessarily serves
at the same time as a talisman against hail, thunder, and lightning.
Further, brands taken from the bonfires are commonly kept in the houses
to guard them against conf