ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 647 
fire does not assume many variations. It will be remembered that 
the prohibition against giving out fire included, in the Shropshire 
example, the prohibition against receiving it or creating it ; and this 
significant inclusion of three definite forms for lighting the house-fire 
from within the house appears to suggest that continuation of the house- 
fire was symbolised. Further down, however, this symbolisation is re- 
duced to very simple limits ; but simple as they are they are connected 
directly with the whole system of the house-fire cult. ‘No fire must on 
any account be taken out of the house between Christmas eve and New 
Year’s eve,’ is the Derbyshire survival ;1 and perhaps, as it carries the 
practice over a period longer than a particular day, it may be taken as 
the most archaic. In Scotland people would not allow a coal to be 
carried out of their house to that of a neighbour on Christmas Day, New 
Year’s Day, Handsel Monday, and Rood Day, the reason being that it 
might be employed for the purpose of witcheraft.?, Here again we have 
not a continuous period but certain selected sacred days. In North- 
umberland, however, although the ceremonial of the Christmas log 
obtains, as we have already noted, in a somewhat degraded form, it is 
only on New Year’s Day that the prohibition against giving out fire 
obtains.* In the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, the people will not 
allow any fire to be taken out of their houses on Old Christmas 
Day.' 
ae Herefordshire we meet with the extreme divergent form of this cus- 
tom, showing the direction of its decline into mere superstition. On Old 
Christmas Day and during the twelve days no person must borrow fire, 
but they may purchase it with some trifle or other, for instance a pin.’ 
4. The House-fire Cult continued : Customs associated with the 
Household Fire. 
In the most perfect examples of the village-fire ceremonial certain 
elements were noted to be associated with the formal attribute of the fire 
—perpetual life—which, whether in their primary forms or in divergence 
from the primary form, were ascertained to contain fragments of ritual or 
primitive associations. Such associations cannot be claimed for the survi- 
vals of the house-fire in its formal attribute of continuous life, because 
the observers of examples of continuous life in the house-fire have not 
extended their work to gather together what the peasantry thought 
about, or how they treated the fire thus guarded from extinction. There 
are, however, one or two associated customs which have been noted, and 
these are of some importance. On the other hand there is another body 
of customs, drawn altogether from another set of examples, generally 
from another part of the country, which can only be explained by re- 
ferring their origin to the same system of fire customs as those which 
stamp the village-fire and the house-fires lighted therefrom. 
We will note, first, the few actually associated customs. In Lewis 
after the house-fire has been newly kindled from the village-fire, ‘a pot 
full of water is quickly set on it and afterwards sprinkled upon the 
people infected with the plague or upon the cattle that have the murrain.’ 
1 Addy, Household Tales, p. 104. 2 Jamieson, Dictionary, s.v. ‘ Yule.’ 
3 Denham Tracts, ii. 340. 4 Gent. Mag. 1822, part ii. p. 603. 
5 Gent. Mag. 1822, part i. p. 13. 
