to burn a stick for us towards Sirius; that the sun may shining come out for us; that Sirius may not coldly come out’ The other man (the one who saw Sirius) says to his son:  ’Bring me the small piece of wood yonder, that I may put the end of it in the fire, that I may burn it towards grandmother; that grandmother may ascend the sky, like the other one, Canopus.’  The child brings him the piece of wood, he (the father) holds the end of it in the fire.  He points it burning towards Sirius; he says that Sirius shall twinkle like Canopus.  He sings; he sings about Canopus, he sings about Sirius; he points to them with fire,[807] that they may twinkle like each other.  He throws fire at them.  He covers himself up entirely (including his head) in his kaross and lies down.  He arises, he sits down; while he does not again lie down; because he feels that he has worked, putting Sirius into the sun’s warmth; so that Sirius may warmly come out.  The women go out early to seek for Bushman rice; they walk, sunning their shoulder blades."[808] What the Bushmen thus do to temper the cold of midwinter in the southern hemisphere by blowing up the celestial fires may have been done by our rude forefathers at the corresponding season in the northern hemisphere.

[The burning wheels and discs of the fire-festivals may be direct imitations of the sun.]

Not only the date of some of the festivals but the manner of their celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun.  The custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at these ceremonies, might well pass for an imitation of the sun’s course in the sky, and the imitation would be especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun’s annual declension begins.  Indeed the custom has been thus interpreted by some of those who have recorded it.[809] Not less graphic, it may be said, is the mimicry of his apparent revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole.[810] Again, the common practice of throwing fiery discs, sometimes expressly said to be shaped like suns, into the air at the festivals may well be a piece of imitative magic.  In these, as in so many cases, the magic force may be supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy:  by imitating the desired result you actually produce it:  by counterfeiting the sun’s progress through the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with punctuality and despatch.  The name “fire of heaven,” by which the midsummer fire is sometimes popularly known,[811] clearly implies a consciousness of a connexion between the earthly and the heavenly flame.

[The wheel sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an imitation of the sun.]