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Updated: May 8, 2025
So next morning very early, about two o'clock, nearly the whole population was astir, and having assembled outside one of the gates of the town they helped to drive the timid cattle, not without much ado, through three separate need-fires; after which they dispersed to their homes in the unalterable conviction that they had rescued the cattle from destruction.
The history of the need-fire can be traced back to early Middle Ages; for in the reign of Pippin, King of Franks, the practice of kindling need-fires was denounced as a heathen superstition by a synod of prelates and nobles held under the presidency of Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz. In Germany the need-fires would seem to have been popular down to the second half of the nineteenth century.
"It is strange," says the antiquary William Henderson, writing about 1866, "to find the custom of lighting 'need-fires' on the occasion of epidemics among cattle still lingering among us, but so it is.
In Silesia, also, need-fires were often employed for the purpose of curing a murrain or preventing its spread. While all other lights within the boundaries were extinguished, the new fire was produced by the friction of nine kinds of wood, and the flame so obtained was used to kindle heaps of brushwood or straw to which every inhabitant had contributed.
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