IV.— ANALYSIS OF CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS.
[No. 1.]
Title.
Ever-burning fire in the homestead.
Type Forms.
(2) At Kildare, in Leinster, the fire of St. Bridget is reported never to go out. The nuns and holy women tend and feed it, adding fuel, with such watchful and diligent care that from the time of the Virgin it has continued burning through a long course of years . . . . . Twenty nuns are engaged. Each of them has the care of the fire for a single night in turn, and on the evening before the twentieth night the last nun having heaped wood upon the fire, says—"Bridget, take charge of your own fire, for this night belongs to you." She then leaves the fire, and in the morning it is found that the fire has not gone out and that the usual quantity of fuel has been used.—Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography of Ireland, cap. xxxiv. xxxv.
(3) "Not a family in the whole island of natives but keeps a fire constantly burning; no one daring to depend upon his neighbours' vigilance in a thing which he imagines is of so much consequence; and every one firmly believing if it should ever happen that no fires were to be found throughout the island the most terrible revolutions and mischief would immediately ensue."—Waldron's Isle of Man [1791], fol. 101.
(4) At Burghead, in Morayshire, on the evening of the last day of December (old style), the youths of the village assemble about dusk and obtain two empty barrels (by force if necessary). They then repair to a particular spot on the sea-shore to commence operations. A stout pole is firmly fixed in one