Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. by Sir James George Frazer

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[New fire at Easter in Carinthia; consecration of fire and water by the
Catholic Church at Easter.]

In the Lesachthal, Carinthia, all the fires in the houses used to be
extinguished on Easter Saturday, and rekindled with a fresh fire brought
from the churchyard, where the priest had lit it by the friction of
flint and steel and had bestowed his blessing on it.[312] Such customs
were probably widespread. In a Latin poem of the sixteenth century,
written by a certain Thomas Kirchmeyer and translated into English by
Barnabe Googe, we read:--

"_On Easter Eve the fire all is quencht in every place,
And fresh againe from out the flint is fetcht with solemne grace:
The priest doth halow this against great daungers many one,
A brande whereof doth every man with greedie mind take home,
That when the fearefull storme appeares, or tempest black arise,
By lighting this he safe may be from stroke of hurtful skies:
A taper great, the Paschall namde, with musicke then they blesse,
And franckensence herein they pricke, for greater holynesse:
This burneth night and day as signe of Christ that conquerde hell,
As if so be this foolish toye suffiseth this to tell.
Then doth the Bishop or the Priest, the water halow straight,
That for their baptisme is reservde: for now no more of waight
Is that they usde the yeare before, nor can they any more,
Yong children christen with the same, as they have done before.
With wondrous pompe and furniture, amid the Church they go,
With candles, crosses, banners, Chrisme, and oyle appoynted tho:
Nine times about the font they marche, and on the saintes doe call,
Then still at length they stande, and straight the Priest begins withall,
And thrise the water doth he touche, and crosses thereon make,
Here bigge and barbrous wordes he speakes, to make the devill quake:
And holsome waters conjureth, and foolishly doth dresse,
Supposing holyar that to make, which God before did blesse:
And after this his candle than, he thrusteth in the floode,
And thrise he breathes thereon with breath, that stinkes of former foode:
And making here an ende, his Chrisme he poureth thereupon,
The people staring hereat stande, amazed every one;
Beleeving that great powre is given to this water here,
By gaping of these learned men, and such like trifling gere.
Therefore in vessels brought they draw, and home they carie some,
Against the grieves that to themselves, or to their beastes may come.
Then Clappers ceasse, and belles are set againe at libertee,
And herewithall the hungrie times of fasting ended bee."_[313]

It is said that formerly all the fires in Rome were lighted afresh from
the holy fire kindled in St. Peter's on Easter Saturday.[314]

[The new fire on Easter Saturday at Florence.]

In Florence the ceremony of kindling the new fire on Easter Eve is
peculiar. The holy flame is elicited from certain flints which are said
to have been brought by a member of the Pazzi family from the Holy Land.
They are kept in the church of the Holy Apostles on the Piazza del
Limbo, and on the morning of Easter Saturday the prior strikes fire from
them and lights a candle from the new flame. The burning candle is then
carried in solemn procession by the clergy and members of the
municipality to the high altar in the cathedral. A vast crowd has
meanwhile assembled in the cathedral and the neighbouring square to
witness the ceremony; amongst the spectators are many peasants drawn
from the surrounding country, for it is commonly believed that on the
success or failure of the ceremony depends the fate of the crops for the
year. Outside the door of the cathedral stands a festal car drawn by two
fine white oxen with gilded horns. The body of the car is loaded with a
pyramid of squibs and crackers and is connected by a wire with a pillar
set up in front of the high altar. The wire extends down the middle of
the nave at a height of about six feet from the ground. Beneath it a
clear passage is left, the spectators being ranged on either side and
crowding the vast interior from wall to wall. When all is ready, High
Mass is celebrated, and precisely at noon, when the first words of the
_Gloria_ are being chanted, the sacred fire is applied to the pillar,
which like the car is wreathed with fireworks. A moment more and a fiery
dove comes flying down the nave, with a hissing sound and a sputter of
sparks, between the two hedges of eager spectators. If all goes well,
the bird pursues its course along the wire and out at the door, and in
another moment a prolonged series of fizzes, pops and bangs announces to
the excited crowd in the cathedral that the fireworks on the car are
going off. Great is the joy accordingly, especially among the bumpkins,
who are now sure of an abundant harvest. But if, as sometimes happens,
the dove stops short in its career and fizzles out, revealing itself as
a stuffed bird with a packet of squibs tied to its tail, great is the
consternation, and deep the curses that issue from between the set teeth
of the clodhoppers, who now give up the harvest for lost. Formerly the
unskilful mechanician who was responsible for the failure would have
been clapped into gaol; but nowadays he is thought sufficiently punished
by the storm of public indignation and the loss of his pay. The disaster
is announced by placards posted about the streets in the evening; and
next morning the newspapers are full of gloomy prognostications.[315]

[The new fire and burning of Judas on Easter Saturday in Mexico.]

Some of these customs have been transported by the Catholic Church to
the New World. Thus in Mexico the new fire is struck from a flint early
in the morning of Easter Saturday, and a candle which has been lighted
at the sacred flame is carried through the church by a deacon shouting
"_Lumen Christi_." Meantime the whole city, we are informed, has been
converted into a vast place of execution. Ropes stretch across the
streets from house to house, and from every house dangles an effigy of
Judas, made of paper pulp. Scores or hundreds of them may adorn a single
street. They are of all shapes and sizes, grotesque in form and garbed
in strange attire, stuffed with gunpowder, squibs and crackers,
sometimes, too, with meat, bread, soap, candy, and clothing, for which
the crowd will scramble and scuffle while the effigies are burning.
There they hang grim, black, and sullen in the strong sunshine, greeted
with a roar of execration by the pious mob. A peal of bells from the
cathedral tower on the stroke of noon gives the signal for the
execution. At the sound a frenzy seizes the crowd. They throw themselves
furiously on the figures of the detested traitor, cut them down, hurl
them with curses into the fire, and fight and struggle with each other
in their efforts to tear the effigies to tatters and appropriate their
contents. Smoke, stink, sputter of crackers, oaths, curses, yells are
now the order of the day. But the traitor does not perish unavenged. For
the anatomy of his frame has been cunningly contrived so as in burning
to discharge volleys of squibs into his assailants; and the wounds and
burns with which their piety is rewarded form a feature of the morning's
entertainment. The English Jockey Club in Mexico used to improve on this
popular pastime by suspending huge figures of Judas, stuffed with copper
coins, from ropes in front of their clubhouse. These were ignited at the
proper moment and lowered within reach of the expectant rabble, and it
was the privilege of members of the club, seated in the balcony, to
watch the grimaces and to hear the shrieks of the victims, as they
stamped and capered about with the hot coppers sticking to their hands,
divided in their minds between an acute sense of pain and a thirst for
filthy lucre.[316]

[The burning of Judas at Easter in South America.]

Scenes of the same sort, though on a less ambitious scale, are witnessed
among the Catholics of South America on the same day. In Brazil the
mourning for the death of Christ ceases at noon on Easter Saturday and
gives place to an extravagant burst of joy at his resurrection. Shots
are fired everywhere, and effigies of Judas are hung on trees or dragged
about the streets, to be finally burned or otherwise destroyed.[317] In
the Indian villages scattered among the wild valleys of the Peruvian
Andes figures of the traitor, made of pasteboard and stuffed with squibs
and crackers, are hanged on gibbets before the door of the church on
Easter Saturday. Fire is set to them, and while they crackle and
explode, the Indians dance and shout for joy at the destruction of their
hated enemy.[318] Similarly at Rio Hacha, in Colombia, Judas is
represented during Holy Week by life-sized effigies, and the people fire
at them as if they were discharging a sacred duty.[319]

[The new fire on Easter Saturday in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem.]

But usages of this sort are not confined to the Latin Church; they are
common to the Greek Church also. Every year on the Saturday before
Easter Sunday a new fire is miraculously kindled at the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem. It descends from heaven and ignites the candles which the
patriarch holds in his hands, while with closed eyes he wrestles in
prayer all alone in the chapel of the Angel. The worshippers meanwhile
wait anxiously in the body of the church, and great are their transports
of joy when at one of the windows of the chapel, which had been all dark
a minute before, there suddenly appears the hand of an angel, or of the
patriarch, holding a lighted taper. This is the sacred new fire; it is
passed out to the expectant believers, and the desperate struggle which
ensues among them to get a share of its blessed influence is only
terminated by the intervention of the Turkish soldiery, who restore
peace and order by hustling the whole multitude impartially out of the
church. In days gone by many lives were often lost in these holy
scrimmages. For example, in the year 1834, the famous Ibrahim Pasha
witnessed the frantic scene from one of the galleries, and, being moved
with compassion at the sight, descended with a few guards into the arena
in the chimerical hope of restoring peace and order among the contending
Christians. He contrived to force his way into the midst of the dense
crowd, but there the heat and pressure were so great that he fainted
away; a body of soldiers, seeing his danger, charged straight into the
throng and carried him out of it in their arms, trampling under foot the
dying and dead in their passage. Nearly two hundred people were killed
that day in the church. The fortunate survivors on these occasions who
succeeded in obtaining a portion of the coveted fire applied it freely
to their faces, their beards, and their garments. The theory was that
the fire, being miraculous, could only bless and not burn them; but the
practical results of the experiment were often disappointing, for while
the blessings were more or less dubious, there could be no doubt
whatever about the burns.[320] The history of the miracle has been
carefully investigated by a Jesuit father. The conclusions at which he
arrives are that the miracle was a miracle indeed so long as the
Catholics had the management of it; but that since it fell into the
hands of the heretics it has been nothing but a barefaced trick and
imposture.[321] Many people will be disposed to agree with the latter
conclusion who might hesitate to accept the former.

[The new fire and the burning of Judas on Easter Saturday in Greece.]

At Athens the new fire is kindled in the cathedral at midnight on Holy
Saturday. A dense crowd with unlit candles in their hands fills the
square in front of the cathedral; the king, the archbishop, and the
highest dignitaries of the church, arrayed in their gorgeous robes,
occupy a platform; and at the exact moment of the resurrection the bells
ring out, and the whole square bursts as by magic into a blaze of light.
Theoretically all the candles are lit from the sacred new fire in the
cathedral, but practically it may be suspected that the matches which
bear the name of Lucifer have some share in the sudden
illumination.[322] Effigies of Judas used to be burned at Athens on
Easter Saturday, but the custom has been forbidden by the Government.
However, firing goes on more or less continuously all over the city both
on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday, and the cartridges used on this
occasion are not always blank. The shots are aimed at Judas, but
sometimes they miss him and hit other people. Outside of Athens the
practice of burning Judas in effigy still survives in some places. For
example, in Cos a straw image of the traitor is made on Easter Day, and
after being hung up and shot at it is burned.[323] A similar custom
appears to prevail at Thebes;[324] it used to be observed by the
Macedonian peasantry, and it is still kept up at Therapia, a fashionable
summer resort of Constantinople.[325]

[The new fire at Candlemas in Armenia.]

In the Armenian Church the sacred new fire is kindled not at Easter but
at Candlemas, that is, on the second of February, or on the eve of that
festival. The materials of the bonfire are piled in an open space near a
church, and they are generally ignited by young couples who have been
married within the year. However, it is the bishop or his vicar who
lights the candles with which fire is set to the pile. All young married
pairs are expected to range themselves about the fire and to dance round
it. Young men leap over the flames, but girls and women content
themselves with going round them, while they pray to be preserved from
the itch and other skin-diseases. When the ceremony is over, the people
eagerly pick up charred sticks or ashes of the fire and preserve them or
scatter them on the four corners of the roof, in the cattle-stall, in
the garden, and on the pastures; for these holy sticks and ashes protect
men and cattle against disease, and fruit-trees against worms and
caterpillars. Omens, too, are drawn from the direction in which the wind
blows the flames and the smoke: if it carries them eastward, there is
hope of a good harvest; but if it inclines them westward, the people
fear that the crops will fail.[326]

[The new fire and the burning of Judas at Easter are probably relics of
paganism.]

In spite of the thin cloak of Christianity thrown over these customs by
representing the new fire as an emblem of Christ and the figure burned
in it as an effigy of Judas, we can hardly doubt that both practices are
of pagan origin. Neither of them has the authority of Christ or of his
disciples; but both of them have abundant analogies in popular custom
and superstition. Some instances of the practice of annually
extinguishing fires and relighting them from a new and sacred flame have
already come before us;[327] but a few examples may here be cited for
the sake of illustrating the wide diffusion of a custom which has found
its way into the ritual both of the Eastern and of the Western Church.

[The new fire at the summer solstice among the Incas of Peru;
the new fire among the Indians of Mexico and New Mexico; the new fire
among the Esquimaux.]

The Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Raymi, a word which their
native historian Garcilasso de la Vega tells us was equivalent to our
Easter. It was held in honour of the sun at the solstice in June. For
three days before the festival the people fasted, men did not sleep with
their wives, and no fires were lighted in Cuzco, the capital. The sacred
new fire was obtained direct from the sun by concentrating his beams on
a highly polished concave plate and reflecting them on a little cotton
wool. With this holy fire the sheep and lambs offered to the sun were
consumed, and the flesh of such as were to be eaten at the festival was
roasted. Portions of the new fire were also conveyed to the temple of
the sun and to the convent of the sacred virgins, where they were kept
burning all the year, and it was an ill omen if the holy flame went
out.[328] At a festival held in the last month of the old Mexican year
all the fires both in the temples and in the houses were extinguished,
and the priest kindled a new fire by rubbing two sticks against each
other before the image of the fire-god.[329] The Zuni Indians of New
Mexico kindle a new fire by the friction of wood both at the winter and
the summer solstice. At the winter solstice the chosen fire-maker
collects a faggot of cedar-wood from every house in the village, and
each person, as he hands the wood to the fire-maker, prays that the
crops may be good in the coming year. For several days before the new
fire is kindled, no ashes or sweepings may be removed from the houses
and no artificial light may appear outside of them, not even a burning
cigarette or the flash of firearms. The Indians believe that no rain
will fall on the fields of the man outside whose house a light has been
seen at this season. The signal for kindling the new fire is given by
the rising of the Morning Star. The flame is produced by twirling an
upright stick between the hands on a horizontal stick laid on the floor
of a sacred chamber, the sparks being caught by a tinder of cedar-dust.
It is forbidden to blow up the smouldering tinder with the breath, for
that would offend the gods. After the fire has thus been ceremonially
kindled, the women and girls of all the families in the village clean
out their houses. They carry the sweepings and ashes in baskets or bowls
to the fields and leave them there. To the sweepings the woman says: "I
now deposit you as sweepings, but in one year you will return to me as
corn." And to the ashes she says: "I now deposit you as ashes, but in
one year you will return to me as meal." At the summer solstice the
sacred fire which has been procured by the friction of wood is used to
kindle the grass and trees, that there may be a great cloud of smoke,
while bull-roarers are swung and prayers offered that the Rain-makers up
aloft will water the earth.[330] From this account we see how intimately
the kindling of a new fire at the two turning-points of the sun's course
is associated in the minds of these Indians with the fertility of the
land, particularly with the growth of the corn. The rolling smoke is
apparently an imitation of rain-clouds designed, on the principle of
homoeopathic magic, to draw showers from the blue sky. Once a year the
Iroquois priesthood supplied the people with a new fire. As a
preparation for the annual rite the fires in all the huts were
extinguished and the ashes scattered about. Then the priest, wearing the
insignia of his office, went from hut to hut relighting the fires by
means of a flint.[331] Among the Esquimaux with whom C.F. Hall resided,
it was the custom that at a certain time, which answered to our New
Year's Day, two men went about from house to house blowing out every
light in the village. One of the men was dressed to represent a woman.
Afterwards the lights were rekindled from a fresh fire. An Esquimau
woman being asked what all this meant, replied, "New sun--new
light."[332] Among the Esquimaux of Iglulik, when the sun first rises
above the horizon after the long night of the Arctic winter, the
children who have watched for his reappearance run into the houses and
blow out the lamps. Then they receive from their mothers presents of
pieces of wick.[333]

[The new fire in Wadai, among the Swahili, and in other parts of
Africa.]

In the Sudanese kingdom of Wadai all the fires in the villages are put
out and the ashes removed from the houses on the day which precedes the
New Year festival. At the beginning of the new year a new fire is lit by
the friction of wood in the great straw hut where the village elders
lounge away the sultry hours together; and every man takes thence a
burning brand with which he rekindles the fire on his domestic
hearth.[334] In the Bahr-el-Ghazal province of the Egyptian Sudan the
people extinguish their old fires at the Arab New Year and bring in new
fire. On the same occasion they beat the walls of their huts, the grass
thatches, and the walls of their enclosures in order to drive away the
devil or evil spirits. The beating of the walls and roofs is accompanied
by the firing of guns, the shouting of men, and the shriller cries of
the women.[335] Thus these people combine an annual expulsion of demons
with an annual lighting of a new fire. Among the Swahili of East Africa
the greatest festival is that of the New Year, which falls in the second
half of August. At a given moment all the fires are extinguished with
water and afterwards relit by the friction of two dry pieces of wood.
The ashes of the old fires are carried out and deposited at cross-roads.
All the people get up very early in the morning and bathe in the sea or
some other water, praying to be kept in good health and to live that
they may bathe again next year. Sham-fights form part of the amusements
of the day; sometimes they pass into grim reality. Indeed the day was
formerly one of general license; every man did that which was good in
his own eyes. No awkward questions were asked about any crimes committed
on this occasion, so some people improved the shining hour by knocking a
few poor devils on the head. Shooting still goes on during the whole
day, and at night the proceedings generally wind up with a great
dance.[336] The King of Benametapa, as the early Portuguese traders
called him, in East Africa used to send commissioners annually to every
town in his dominions; on the arrival of one of these officers the
inhabitants of each town had to put out all their fires and to receive a
new fire from him. Failure to comply with this custom was treated as
rebellion.[337] Some tribes of British Central Africa carefully
extinguish the fires on the hearths at the beginning of the hoeing
season and at harvest; the fires are afterwards rekindled by friction,
and the people indulge in dances of various kinds.[338]

[The new fire among the Todas of Southern India and among the Nagas of
North-Eastern India.]

The Todas of the Neilgheny Hills, in Southern India, annually kindle a
sacred new fire by the friction of wood in the month which begins with
the October moon. The ceremony is performed by two holy dairymen at the
foot of a high hill. When they have lighted the fire by rubbing two dry
sticks together, and it begins to burn well, they stand a little way off
and pray, saying, "May the young grass flower! May honey flourish! May
fruit ripen!" The purpose of the ceremony is to make the grass and honey
plentiful. In ancient times the Todas lived largely on wild fruits, and
then the rite of the new fire was very important. Now that they subsist
chiefly on the milk of their buffaloes, the ceremony has lost much of
its old significance.[339] When the Nagas of North-Eastern India have
felled the timber and cut down the scrub in those patches of jungle
which they propose to cultivate, they put out all the fires in the
village and light a new fire by rubbing two dry pieces of wood together.
Then having kindled torches at it they proceed with them to the jungle
and ignite the felled timber and brushwood. The flesh of a cow or
buffalo is also roasted on the new fire and furnishes a sacrificial
meal.[340] Near the small town of Kahma in Burma, between Prome and
Thayetmyo, certain gases escape from a hollow in the ground and burn
with a steady flame during the dry season of the year. The people regard
the flame as the forge of a spectral smith who here carried on his
business after death had removed him from his old smithy in the village.
Once a year all the household fires in Kahma are extinguished and then
lighted afresh from the ghostly flame.[341]

[The new fire in China and Japan.]

In China every year, about the beginning of April, certain officials,
called _Sz'hueen_, used of old to go about the country armed with wooden
clappers. Their business was to summon the people and command them to
put out every fire. This was the beginning of a season called
_Han-shih-tsieh_, or "eating cold food." For three days all household
fires remained extinct as a preparation for the solemn renewal of the
fire, which took place on the fifth or sixth day of April, being the
hundred and fifth day after the winter solstice. The ceremony was
performed with great pomp by the same officials, who procured the new
fire from heaven by reflecting the sun's rays either from a metal mirror
or from a crystal on dry moss. Fire thus obtained is called by the
Chinese heavenly fire, and its use is enjoined in sacrifices; whereas
fire elicited by the friction of wood is termed by them earthly fire,
and its use is prescribed for cooking and other domestic purposes. When
once the new fire had thus been drawn from the sun, all the people were
free to rekindle their domestic hearths; and, as a Chinese distich has
it--

"_At the festival of the cold food there are a thousand white stalks
among the flowers;
On the day Tsing-ming, at sunrise, you may see the smoke of ten
thousand houses_."

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