- ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 651 
And so to discover whether it was a fairy-child, the hearth was again the 
place of operation. A new skull was taken and hung over the fire from a 
piece of a branch of a hazel tree, and into this basket the suspected 
_changeling was laid. Careful watch was kept till it screamed. If it 
screamed it was a changeling, and it was held fast to prevent its escape.' 
In Scotland we meet with the significant extinction of fire, on the 
occasion of a death, Pennant stating, in his ‘Tour in Scotland :’ ‘ All 
fire is extinguished where a corpse is kept.’ How clearly fire is repre- 
sented at death is shown, I think, by the widespread custom of the use 
of torches and lights while the body is lying in the house, a custom that 
is lengthily described by Brand.” 
af There is one other instance of the special use of the hearth-fire 
which I must mention before passing on. Mr. Hunt relates a story 
: in his ‘Popular Romances of the West of England’? which well intro- 
duces the subject. ‘The child of a miner who had been suffering from a 
disease, and had been sent on several occasions to the doctor without 
any good resulting, was one day discovered by the father to be “over- 
looked.” The gossips of the parish had for some time insisted upon the 
~ fact that the child had been ill-wished, and that she would never be 
_ better until “the spell was taken off her.” It was then formally an- 
7 nounced that the girl could never recover unless three burning sticks were 
taken from the hearth of the “overlooker,” and the child was made to 
walk three times over them when they were laid across on the ground, 
and then quench the fire with water.’ 
5. Comparison with Primitive Custom. 
This survey, by analysis and classification, of the fire customs sur- 
viving in Britain has been kept clear of any terminology which is not 
actually justified by the circumstances of each individual example or 
group of examples. But it cannot have escaped notice that the facts 
_ which have been quoted all tend in one direction, namely to the con- 
nection of the fire customs with the family, and through the family to 
some unit larger than the family, represented by the modern village in a 
geographical sense and by a group of common descendants in a personal 
sense. 
But if we are justified in using such significant terminology as this, 
we have already made the first step towards the identification of these 
survivals as the remnants of a system of fire-worship belonging to some 
one or other of the early tribes who conquered Britain before they had 
conformed to the Christian religion ; for I shall assert that the con- 
nection between the modern village-fire and the house-fire is due to the 
survival in traditional custom of the ancient connection between the 
tribal fire and the family or clan fire. When, therefore, in addition to 
this essential feature of the connection between the village-fire and the 
house-fire, an examination of the details of both village-fire customs and 
house-fire customs has revealed certain significant indications of the once 
sacred character of these fires, of ceremonies which recall almost the 
1 Gregor, op. cit. p. 9. 
? Brand’s Popular Antiquities, ii. p. 276 et seq. 
3 Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 212. 
