It
was a strange, wild scene! The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which
probably had been yearly so employed ever since the Kelts had brought
from the East the rite that they had handed on to the Swabians--the
Beltane fire, whose like was blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the
Hartz, nay, even in England, Scotland, and on the granite points of
Ireland. Heaped up for many previous days with faggots from the
forest, then apparently inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled,
and rose high, red and smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and
obscuring the stars. Round it, completely hiding the bonfire itself,
were hosts of dark figures swarming to approach it--all with a
purpose. All held old shoes or superannuated garments in their hands
to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful that every villager
should contribute something from his house--once, no doubt, as an
offering to Bel, but now as a mere unmeaning observance. And shrieks
of merriment followed the contribution of each too well-known article
of rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire! Girls and boys
had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their bounces of future
chances of matrimony.
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