t. The young
people kindle a bonfire on the crest of the mountain above the village;
and the burning discs which they hurl into the air are said to present
in the darkness the aspect of a continual shower of falling stars. When
the supply of discs is exhausted and the bonfire begins to burn low, the
boys light torches and run with them at full speed down one or other of
the three steep and winding paths that descend the mountain-side to the
village. Bumps, bruises, and scratches are often the result of their
efforts to outstrip each other in the headlong race.[293] In the Rhoen
Mountains, situated on the borders of Hesse and Bavaria, the people used
to march to the top of a hill or eminence on the first Sunday in Lent.
Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles
swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled
down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their
burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap, and
standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of
running about the fields with the blazing torches was to "drive away the
wicked sower." Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might
preserve the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless
them.[294] In neighbouring villages of Hesse, between the Rhoen and the
Vogel Mountains, it is thought that wherever the burning wheels roll,
the fields will be safe from hail and storm.[295] At Konz on the
Moselle, on the Thursday before the first Sunday in Lent, the two guilds
of the butchers and the weavers used to repair to the Marxberg and there
set up an oak-tree with a wheel fastened to it. On the following Sunday
the people ascended the hill, cut down the oak, set fire to the wheel,
and sent both oak and wheel rolling down the hillside, while a guard of
butchers, mounted on horses, fired at the flaming wheel in its descent.
If the wheel rolled down into the Moselle, the butchers were rewarded
with a waggon-load of wine by the archbishop of Treves.[296]

[Burning discs thrown into the air.]

In Switzerland, also, it is or used to be customary to kindle bonfires
on high places on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent, and the day
is therefore popularly known as Spark Sunday. The custom prevailed, for
example, throughout the canton of Lucerne. Boys went about from house to
house begging for wood and straw, then piled the fuel on a conspicuous
mou