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 mountain or hill round about a pole, which bore a straw effigy called “the witch.”  At nightfall the pile was set on fire, and the young folks danced wildly round it, some of them cracking whips or ringing bells; and when the fire burned low enough, they leaped over it.  This was called “burning the witch.”  In some parts of the canton also they used to wrap old wheels in straw and thorns, put a light to them, and send them rolling and blazing down hill.  The same custom of rolling lighted wheels down hill is attested by old authorities for the cantons of Aargau and Bale.  The more bonfires could be seen sparkling and flaring in the darkness, the more fruitful was the year expected to be; and the higher the dancers leaped beside or over the fire, the higher, it was thought, would grow the flax.  In the district of Freiburg and at Birseck in the district of Bale it was the last married man or woman who must kindle