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This interpretion is confirmed by the name ankenmilch bohren, which is given to the need-fire in some parts of Switzerland. See E. Hoffmann-Krayer, "Fruchtbarkeitsriten im schweizerischen Volksbrauch," Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskünde, xi. p. 245. Indiculus Superstitionum et Paganiarum, No. XV., "De igne fricato de ligno i.e. nodfyr."
Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's Day an ancient heathen usage, the kindling of the Nodfyr, which was forbidden them by St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present day that people and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a kind of baptism by fire.
This is the sense attached to it in Lindenbrog's glossary on the capitularies, quoted by Grimm, op. cit. i. p. 502: "Eum ergo ignem nodfeur et nodfyr, quasi necessarium ignem vocant" C.L. Rochholz would connect need with a verb nieten "to churn," so that need-fire would mean "churned fire."
John's day was solemnised with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the originally mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different nations by superadded relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's day an ancient heathen usage, the kindling of the "Nodfyr," which was forbidden them by St.
John the Baptist, wrench a stake from a fence, wind a rope round it, and pull it to and fro till it catches fire. This fire they carefully feed with straw and dry sticks and scatter the ashes over the vegetable gardens, foolishly and superstitiously imagining that in this way the caterpillar can be kept off. They call such a fire nodfeur or nodfyr, that is to say need-fire."
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