ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 643 
ments which belong to the village phase. The family element, left to 
struggle on by itself, would take upon itself some of the features thus lost, 
especially such an extremely important characteristic as that of perpetual 
life. This is the explanation of the following remarkable survival. In 
Lakeland of northern England the old hearth-fire was raked or put into a 
condition of smouldering at nights with superstitious reverence, and was 
thus ‘kept up from day to day, from month to month, from year to year, 
and from generation to generation,’ and more instances than one are 
known ‘where the house-fire had been kept up for three generaticns, and 
during all that time had been so zealously guarded that it had not. been 
once allowed to go out. There is a well-known instance where a man had 
what he called his “grandfather's fire,” that is, a fire that was known to 
have been kept up without extinction for at least three generations, and 
when it once accidentally went out he went to some woodcutters who had 
lighted their fire from his and brought back from their fire a fire to his 
own hearth, that thus he might possess as it were the seeds of his ances- 
tors’ original fire.’! The elimination of the ceremony of annual renewal 
in this case has caused the accentuation of the idea of perpetual life, but 
the process for renewal where perpetual life has been broken by accident 
brings back the old conception of the house-fire being derived from a 
sacred source. 
This example, significant as it is of itself, becomes all the more so 
when it is discovered that other examples of the house-fire which do not 
renew their life annually from the village-fire have adopted a form of 
annual renewal which cannot but be considered as due to an original 
renewal from the village-fire. We have seen above that this particular 
element would be the first to give way before advancing civilisation. 
Granting that this had taken place in cases where the perpetuation of 
the cult of the house-fire was inclined to go on much longer in sur- 
vival, we should get a form of annual renewal minus the village-fire from 
which such renewal was obtained. A further advance in the line of 
degradation may lead us to a form of annual renewal where not only 
has the village-fire ceased to be a part of the ceremony, but some other 
element has been introduced into the gap caused by the village-fire 
having dropped out of the ceremony. Thus there are two groups of fire 
customs to allow for—one where annual renewal pure and simple takes 
place, or is symbolised as taking place ; the second where annual renewal 
takes place in connection with some other element than that of fire. 
The examples where the annual renewal is symbolised are numerous. 
They take the following forms : embers of a particular fire are preserved 
to light the next anniversary fire, old and new fires being thus connected ; 
the fire of New Year’s eve in the old year is kept alight until New Year's 
morn in the new year, old and new years being thus connected by an un- 
extinguished fire ; the prohibition against giving light out of the house at 
certain sacred periods, or on certain sacred days, the life of every house- 
fire being thus held to be sacred on that day and kept up by the house- 
family itself and not by kindling from without. Variations of these forms 
will of course occur, but these variations do not suggest new forms of the 
symbolisation of the annual renewal of the house-fire. They only show 
the direction which degradation of the survivals takes when once symbo- 
lisation is made to do duty for actual fact. 
1 Trans. Cumberland and Westmoreland Antig. and Arch. Soc. xii. 289, 290. 
pis 
