"{21}
In the north of England in the days of tinder-boxes, if any one could not
get a light it was useless to ask a neighbour for one, so frightfully
unlucky was it to allow any light to leave the house between Christmas
Eve and New Year's Day.{22} The idea of the unluckiness of giving out
fire at the Kalends of January can be traced back to the eighth century
when, as we saw in Chapter VI., St. Boniface alluded to this superstition
among the people or Rome.
In Shropshire the idea is extended even to ashes, which must not be
thrown out of the house on Christmas Day, "for fear of throwing them in
Our Saviour's face." Perhaps such superstitions may originally have had
to do with dread that the "luck" of the family, the household spirit,
might be carried away with the gift of fire from the hearth.{23}
When Miss Burne wrote in the eighties there were still many West
Shropshire people who could remember seeing the "Christmas Brand" drawn
by horses to the farmhouse door, and placed at the back of the wide open
hearth, where the flame was made up in front of it. "The embers," says
one informant, "were raked up to it every night, and it was carefully
tended that it might not go out during the whole season, during which
time no light might either be struck, given, or borrowed.
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