“Granno, mo mio, Granno, mon pouere, Granno, mo mouere!”

that is, “Grannus my friend, Grannus my father, Grannus my mother.”  Then they pass the burning torches under the branches of every tree, singing,

“Brando, brandounci Tsaque brantso, in plan panei!”

that is, “Firebrand burn; every branch a basketful!” In some villages the people also run across the sown fields and shake the ashes of the torches on the ground; also they put some of the ashes in the fowls’ nests, in order that the hens may lay plenty of eggs throughout the year.  When all these ceremonies have been performed, everybody goes home and feasts; the special dishes of the evening are fritters and pancakes.[275] Here the application of the fire to the fruit-trees, to the sown fields, and to the nests of the poultry is clearly a charm intended to ensure fertility; and the Granno to whom the invocations are addressed, and who gives his name to the torches, may possibly be, as Dr. Pommerol suggests,[276] no other than the ancient Celtic god Grannus, whom the Romans identified with Apollo, and whose worship is attested by inscriptions found not only in France but in Scotland and on the Danube.[277] If the name Grannus is derived, as the learned tell us, from a root meaning “to glow, burn, shine,"[278] the deity who bore the name and was identified with Apollo may well have been a sun-god; and in that case the prayers addressed to him by the peasants of the Auvergne, while they wave the blazing, crackling torches about the fruit-trees, would be eminently appropriate.  For who could ripen the fruit so well as the sun-god? and what better process could be devised to draw the blossoms from the bare boughs than the application to them of that genial warmth which is ultimately derived from the solar beams?  Thus the fire-festival of the first Sunday in Lent, as it is observed in Auvergne, may be interpreted very naturally and simply as a religious or rather perhaps magical ceremony designed to procure a due supply of the sun’s heat for plants and animals.  At the same time we should remember that the employment of fire in this and kindred ceremonies may have been designed originally, not so much to stimulate growth and reproduction, as to burn and destroy all agencies, whether in the shape of vermin, witches, or what not, which threatened or were supposed to threaten the growth of the crops and the multiplication of animals.  It is often difficult to decide between these two different interpretations of the use of fire in agricultural rites.  In any case the fire-festival of Auvergne on the first Sunday in Lent may date from Druidical times.

[French custom of carrying lighted torches (brandons) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent.]