that was a stage when fire had to be kept in, and if it went out,
borrowed from a neighbour. In the earliest age, fire was obtained by
friction; a piece of wood with a hole in it was placed on the ground
between the feet. Then a man held a piece shaped like the letter T in
his hands, and rapidly twirled this about, with the long end inserted
in the hole of the piece he held between his feet, till by friction the
upright was ignited. The pieces of wood must be very dry, and requisite
dryness was not easily procurable in our moist northern climes,
consequently the labour of kindling a flame was proportionately great.
Sometimes a wheel was employed, and the axle turned in that to produce
a flame. It has been thought that the _fylfot_ [Illustration: fylfot],
the crook-legged cross found on so many monuments of antiquity, the
_Svastika_ of India, represents an instrument for the production of
fire by friction. But owing to the great difficulty in producing fire
by this means, the greatest possible care was taken of the household
fire, lest it should become extinguished. This originated the worship
of Vesta. The flame once procured was guarded against extinction
in some central spot by the unmarried women of the house, and when
villages and towns were formed, a central circular hut was erected in
which a common fire was maintained, and watched continuously. From this
central hearth all the hearths of the settlement were supplied. Ovid
tells us that the first temple of Vesta at Rome was constructed of
wattled walls, and roofed with thatch like the primitive huts of the
inhabitants. It was little other than a circular, covered fireplace,
and was tended by the unmarried girls of the infant community. It
served as the public hearth of Rome, and on it glowed, unextinguished
throughout the year, the sacred fire, which was supposed to have been
brought from Troy, and the continuance of which was thought to be
linked with the fortunes of the city. The name Vesta is believed to
be derived from the same root as the Sanscrit _vas_, which means “to
dwell, to inhabit,” and shows that she was the goddess of home, and
home had the hearth as its focus. A town, a state, is but a large
family, and what the domestic hearth was to the house, that the
temple of the perpetual fire became to the city. Every town had its
Vesta, or common hearth, and the colonies derived their fire from
the mother hearth. Should a vestal maiden allow the sacred fire to
become extinguished, she was beaten by the Grand Pontiff till her blood
flowed, and the new fire was solemnly rekindled by rubbing together dry
wood, or by focussing the sun’s rays. It might not be borrowed from a
strange place. The circular form and domed roof of the Temples of Vesta
were survivals of the prehistoric huts of the aborigines.
Among the legends of the early Celtic saints nothing is more common
than the story of the saint being sent to borrow fire, and carrying it
in his lap without the fire injuring his garment.
In Ireland, before St. Patrick introduced Christianity, there was a
temple at Tara where fire burned ever, and was on no account suffered
to go out.
When Christianity became dominant, it was necessary to dissociate
the ideas of the people from the central fire as mixed up with the
old gods; at the same time some central fire was an absolute need.
Accordingly the Church was converted into the sacred depository of the
perpetual fire, and a lamp was kept in it ever burning, not only that
the candles might be ignited from it for the services, without recourse
had to friction or tinder flint and steel, but also that the parish,
the village, the town, might obtain thence their fire.
[Illustration: _Fig. 30._--CRESSET-STONE, ST. AMBROGIO, MILAN.]
[Illustration: _Fig. 31._--CRESSET-STONE, LEWANNICK.]
There exist still a few--a very few--contrivances for this perpetual
fire in our churches; they go by the name of cresset-stones. The
earliest I know is not in England, but is in the atrium outside the
remarkable church of St. Ambrogio at Milan. It is a block of white
marble on a moulded base, it is now broken, but banded together with
iron. It stands 3 feet 10 inches high, and is 2 feet 6 inches in
diameter at top. It consists of a flat surface in which are depressed
nine cuplike hollows. These were originally filled with oil, and wicks
were placed in them and ignited. In England one is still _in situ_,
in the church of Lewannick, in Cornwall. There it is not far from the
door. It consists of a circular block containing on its flat upper
surface, which is twenty-two inches across, seven cuplike hollows,
four and a half inches deep. The stone stands on a rudely moulded
base, octagonal, and is in all about 2 feet 6 inches high. In Furness
Abbey, among the ruins, has been found another, with five cups in it;
at Calder Abbey another, with sixteen such cups for oil and wicks. At
York is another with six such fire-cups, and at Stockholm another with
the same number, in a square stone table. At Wool Church, Dorset, is
again another example built into the south wall of a small chapel on
the north side of the chancel. It is a block of Purbeck marble, and has
in the top five cup-shaped cavities quite blackened with the oil and
smoke. In some of the examples there are traces of a metal pin around
which the wick was twisted.
In addition to these, in several churches are to be found lamp-niches.
Some have chimneys or flues, which pass upwards, in some cases passing
into the chimneys of fireplaces. Others have conical hollows in the
heads or roofs, in order to catch the soot, and prevent it passing out
into the church.
Now, although these lamps and cressets had their religious
signification, yet this religious signification was an afterthought.
The origin of them lay in the necessity of there being in every place
a central light, from which light could at any time be borrowed;
and the reason why this central light was put in the church was to
dissociate it from the heathen ideas attached formerly to it. As it
was, the good people of the Middle Ages were not quite satisfied with
the central church fire, and they had recourse in times of emergency to
others--and as the Church deemed them--unholy fires. When a plague and
murrain appeared among cattle, then they lighted need-fires, from two
pieces of dry wood, and drove the cattle between the flames, believing
that this new flame was wholesome to the purging away of the disease.
For kindling the need-fires the employment of flint and steel was
forbidden. The fire was only efficacious when extracted in prehistoric
fashion, out of wood. The lighting of these need-fires was forbidden
by the Church in the eighth century. What shows that this need-fire
was distinctly heathen is that in the Church new fire was obtained at
Easter annually by striking flint and steel together. It was supposed
that the old fire in a twelvemonth had got exhausted, or perhaps that
all light expired with Christ, and that new fire must be obtained.
Accordingly the priest solemnly struck new fire out of flint and steel.
But fire from flint and steel was a novelty; and the people, Pagan at
heart, had no confidence in it, and in time of adversity went back to
the need-fire kindled in the time-honoured way from wood by friction,
before this new-fangled way of drawing it out of stone and iron was
invented.
The curious festival of the Car of Fire observed on Easter Eve every
year at Florence carries us back to a remote period when fire was a
sacred and mysterious thing. As is well known, in the Eastern Church,
also in the Roman Catholic Church, all fires are extinguished before
Easter; and in the Cathedral, the Bishop, on Easter morning, strikes
new fire, blesses it, and all the hearths in the city receive the new
fire from this blessed spark. It is vulgarly supposed that the old fire
has got worn out, and has lost its full vigour by use throughout the
year, and that the new fire is full of restless and youthful energy.
There can be little doubt that this idea goes back to a remote and
Pagan time, and the Church accepted what was a common custom, and gave
it, or tried to give it, a new and Christian idea, connecting it with
the resurrection of Him who is the Light of the World. The same custom
of striking and blessing new fire exists in many parts of the West as
well as the East, and is sanctioned by the Roman Church. But nowhere
does this ancient usage assume so quaint and picturesque a form as
at Florence. There, however, the primitive significance is completely
forgotten, and the people have endeavoured to explain the ceremony
which I will now describe in various mutually contradictory ways.
On Easter Eve, four magnificent white oxen, their huge horns wreathed
with flowers, and with garlands about them, as though they were being
conveyed to sacrifice, draw a huge car, painted black, some twenty-five
feet high, pyramidal in shape, and crowned with a mural coronet,
into the piazza before the west doors of the white marble cathedral.
The car is itself wreathed with flowers to its highest pinnacle, and
with the flowers various fireworks are interspersed. As soon as this
great trophy is in place, and the oxen unyoked, the west doors of the
cathedral are thrown open, and a rope is strained from the top of the
car to a pillar that is erected in front of the high altar, a distance
of some two hundred yards. On this cord is seen perched a white dove,
composed of some white substance, probably plaster. For two hours
before the event of the day takes place the great piazza and the nave
of the vast cathedral are crowded. Villagers from all the country round
have arrived; but there are also present plenty of townsfolk, and
strangers from foreign lands. At half-past eleven, the archbishop and
all his clergy come in procession down the body of the church, pass
out of the west doors, and make the circuit of the cathedral. Before
twelve o’clock strikes they are again in their places in the choir.
At the stroke of noon the newly-blessed fire is applied to a train
of gunpowder at the foot of the pillar. In another moment the pigeon
skims down the nave, pouring out a shower of fire, sweeps out of the
west door of the cathedral, reaches the trophy in the square, sets
fire to a fusee there, then turns and flies back along the rope, still
discharging a rain of fire, till it has reached its pillar before the
altar, and there is still.
[Illustration: _Fig. 32._--THE CARRO, FLORENCE.]
But in the meantime the fusee at the car has set fire to various squibs
and petards and crackers there, and the whole structure is speedily
enveloped in fire and smoke, from which explosions issue every few
moments. As soon as the last firework has expired, the white oxen are
again yoked to the car, and it is drawn away.
The flight of the dove is watched by the peasants with breathless
anxiety, for the course it takes indicates, in their idea, the sort
of weather that is likely to ensue during the year. If the bird moves
slowly, halts, then goes on again, halts, and is sluggish in its
flight, they conclude the year will be tempestuous and the harvest
bad. If the dove skims along to the car and back without a hitch, they
calculate on a splendid summer and autumn, on a rich yield of corn, and
overflowing presses of grapes.
And now for the legends whereby the people explain this curious custom.
According to one, a certain Florentine named Pazzino went to Jerusalem
in the twelfth century, kindled a torch there at the Holy Sepulchre
on Easter Eve, and resolved to bring this same sacred fire with him
back to Florence. But as he rode along, the wind blew in his face and
well-nigh extinguished his torch, so he sat his steed with his face
to the tail, screening the flame with his body, and so rode all the
way home! The people along his route, seeing him thus ride reversed,
shouted out, “Pazzi! Pazzi!” (“O fool! fool!”) and that name of “fool”
he and his family assumed; and the family is still represented in
Florence.
There is another version of the story; one Pazzino, seeing the Holy
Sepulchre in the hands of the infidels, broke off as much of it as he
could carry to convey home to his dear Florence. As he was pursued
by the Saracens, he reversed the shoes of his horse to avoid being
tracked. On reaching Florence it was resolved that the new Easter fire
should always be kindled on the stone of the Holy Sepulchre he had
brought home. In honour of his achievement, moreover, the municipality
ordered that the ceremony of the Car of Fire and the fiery dove should
be maintained every year. For many centuries the expenses were borne by
the Pazzi family; but of late years they have been relieved of these by
the municipality.
The third version of the story is, that Pazzino was a knight with
Godfrey de Bouillon in the first Crusade, and that he was the first
of the besiegers to mount the walls and plant on them the banner of
the cross. Moreover, he sent the tidings of the recovery of the Holy
Sepulchre home to Florence by a carrier-pigeon, and thus the news
reached Florence long before it could have arrived in any other way.
Such are the principal legends connected with this curious ceremony,
and we are constrained to say that we believe that one is as fabulous
as another. The explanation of the custom is really this.
The rite of striking the new fire was observed at Florence, as
elsewhere, from an early date, but the _communication_ of the new fire
from the newly-ignited candle was both a long affair, and occasioned
noise, struggle and inconvenience. Accordingly--partly to save the
church from being the scene of an unseemly scramble, and partly to
make the communication of the fire an easy matter to a large number
of persons at once--an ingenious contrivance was made, whereby a dove
should carry the flame from the choir of the cathedral, above the reach
of the people, who therefore could not scuffle and scramble for it, to
the market-place outside, where it ignited a bonfire, to which all the
people could apply their candles and torches. After a while the real
intention was forgotten, and the bonfire was converted into a great
exhibition of fireworks in the daytime.
The whole ceremony has a somewhat childish character, but then it dates
back to a period when all men were children; and it serves, if rightly
understood, to link us with the past, and enables us to measure the
distance we have trodden since those ages when fire was one of the most
difficult things to be re-acquired, if once lost, and the preservation
of fire and the striking of fire were matters of extreme importance,
and were after a while reserved to a sacred class.[22]
VI.
Umbrellas.
Some years ago I happened to be at that most picturesque old city of
Würzburg on a showery May market-day. The window of my hotel commanded
the square. The moment that the first sprinkle came over the busy scene
of market women and chafferers, the whole square suddenly flowered
like a vast garden. Every woman at her stall expanded an enormous
umbrella, and these umbrellas were of every dye--crimson, blue, green,
chocolate, and--yes, there was even one of marigold yellow, under which
the huckstress crouched as beneath a mighty inverted eschscholtzia. Nor
were these umbrellas all _selfs_, as horticulturists describe monotoned
pansies; for some were surrounded with a perfect rainbow of coloured
lines as a border; and others were wreathed about with a pattern of
many-hued flowers. Presently, out came the May sun, and, _presto_,
every umbrella was closed and folded and laid aside: the flower garden
had resolved itself into a swarm of busy marketers.
On reaching Innsbruck, I lighted on an umbrella-maker’s shop under
one of the arcades near the Golden Roof of Frederick with the Empty
Pockets. I saw suspended before the vault in which the man dwelt or
did business, umbrellas the exact reproductions of what I had seen at
Würzburg--red, green, brown, blue, even white--lined with pink, like
mushrooms: and for the sum of about fifteen shillings I became the
happy possessor of one of these articles, which I proceed to describe.
The covering was of a brilliant red, and imprinted round it was a
wreath of flowers and foliage, white, yellow, blue, and green; around
the ferule also was a smaller wreath similar in colour and character.
This cover was stretched on canes, such canes as are well known in
schools; and the canes were distended by twisted brass strainers,
rising out of a sliding tube of elaborately hammered brass, through
which passed the stick of the umbrella. The whole, when expanded,
measured nearly five feet, and was not extraordinarily heavy, nothing
like the weight of a gig-umbrella. Walking under it was like walking
about in a tent, taking the tent with one; and walking under it in the
rain filled one with sanguine hopes that the day was about to mend, so
surrounded was one with a warm and cheerful glow. On a hot climb over
a pass, when I spread this shelter above my head against the sun, I
felt that I must appear to the shepherds on the high pastures like a
migratory Alpine rose.
I met with no inconvenience whatever from my umbrella till I reached
Heidelberg on my way home, and innocently walked with it under my
arm in the Castle gardens on Sunday afternoon. Then I found that
it provoked attention and excited astonishment. Such an umbrella
had its social level, and that level was the market-place, not the
Castle gardens; it was sufferable as spread over an old woman vending
_sauerkraut_, but not as carried furled in the hand of a respectably
dressed gentleman. So much comment did my umbrella occasion that it
annoyed me, spoiled the pleasure of my walk, and I accepted the offer
of a friend to relieve me of it. He took my umbrella and thrust it up
his back under his coat, and with crossed arms to the rear, hugged
it to his spine. But even so it was not to escape observation, for
the black handle, crooked, appeared below his coat, a fact to which I
was aroused as I dropped behind my friend, by the exclamations of a
nursemaid: “_Ach Tausend!_ the Herr has a curly tail!” and then of a
Professor, who, beckoning some students to him, said: “Let us catch
him--the Missing Link, _homo caudatus_.”
On reaching England, the great scarlet-crimson (it was neither exactly
one nor exactly the other) umbrella was consigned to the stand in the
hall. Those were not the days when ladies spread red parasols above
their bonnets, and had sunshades to match their gowns: in those days
all parasols were brown or black; consequently the innovation of a red
umbrella would be too great, too startling for me to attempt. But one
morning--it was that on which the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh made
their entry into London after their marriage--I started early to drive
to the station and go to town and join the sightseers. It may be in the
recollection of those who were out that day that snow fell. Early in
the morning in the country there was a good deal of snow, so much, that
I thought I might safely take my Tyrolese umbrella to cover me in my
gig. I intended to furl it before I reached the station and such places
where men do congregate. It was remarkable that although the snow
spoiled the picturesque effect of the procession in Regent’s Street by
making the redcoats draw on their overcoats, it induced me to unfurl my
marvellous red travelling tent--which is an instance, may be, of the
compensation there is in nature.
As I drove along, I chanced on an umbrella-maker, trudging through the
snow, head down, with a bundle of his manufacture under his arm. He
neither saw nor heard the dogcart till it was close on him, when the
driver shouted to him to stand aside. Then he started back, looked
up, and I saw the change of expression in the man’s face, as his
eyes took in the apparition above him of the expanded red umbrella,
flower-wreathed and brass-mounted. The face had been inanimate; then,
a wild enthusiasm or astonishment kindled it, and down into the snow
at his feet fell the umbrellas he was carrying. I drove on, but looked
back at intervals, and as long as he was in sight, I saw him standing
in the road, with eyes and mouth open, hands expanded and every finger
distended, and his umbrellas, uncollected, scattered about him in the
snow.
These reminiscences of my remarkable umbrella lead me to say something
of umbrellas in general.
I hardly think that the true origin, development, and, shall I say,
degradation of the umbrella, is generally known. Yet it deserves to
be known, for it supplies a graphic and striking condensation of vast
social changes.
The umbrella comes to us from the East, from nations living under a
burning sun, to whom shade is therefore agreeable. We can understand
how the giving of shade came easily to be regarded as a symbol of
majesty. In the apocryphal book of Baruch occurs the passage, “We shall
live under the shadow of Nebucodonosor, king of Babylon, and under the
shadow of Balthasar, his son.” Primitively, kings gave audience and
delivered judgment seated under trees, not only because of the comfort
of the shade, but also because of the symbolism. So, when Ethelbert,
King of Kent, received St. Augustine, he was seated under an oak; and
Wagner is quite right when, in the opening scene in _Lohengrin_, he
makes King Pepin hold his court enthroned under a tree.
But when sovereigns took to receiving suitors and dispensing justice
indoors, they transferred with them to within the symbol of the tree.
Phylarchus, in describing the luxury of Alexander, says that the
Persian kings gave audience under plane trees or vines made of gold
and hung with emeralds, but that the magnificence of the throne of
Alexander surpassed theirs. Curtius relates how the kings of India had
golden vines erected in their judgment halls so as to overspread their
thrones. The throne of Cyrus was over-canopied by a golden vine of
seven branches. Firdusi describes a similar throne-tree at the festival
given by Kai Khosru:
“A tree was erected, many-branched,
Bending over the throne with its head:
Of silver the trunk, but the branches of gold;
The buds and the blossoms were rubies;
The fruit was of sapphire and cornelian stone;
And the foliage all was of emerald.”
From the East, the idea or fashion was transplanted to Byzantium,
and the emperors there had similar trees erected above their thrones
overshadowing them. William of Rubruquis describes a great silver tree
in the Palace of the Khan of the Tartars, in 1253, of which leaves and
fruit, as well as branches, were of silver. But kings went about, and
wherever they went their majesty surrounded them; and consequently,
with the double motive of comfort and of symbolism, the umbrella was
invented as a portable canopy or tree over the head of the sovereign.
The Greeks noticed and disapproved of the use of the umbrella.[23]
Xenophon says that the Persians were so effeminate that they could
not content themselves in summer with the shade afforded by trees and
rocks, but that they employed portable contrivances for producing
artificial shade. But when he says this, he most certainly refers to
the kings, for they alone had the right to use umbrellas.
On Assyrian and Persepolitan reliefs we have an eunuch behind the
sovereign holding an umbrella over him when walking, or when riding
in his chariot, or when seated; on a bas-relief of Assur-bani-pal,
however, the king is figured reclining under an overshadowing vine,
which is probably artificial. Firdusi says of Minutscher: “A silken
umbrella afforded shade to his head.”
M. de la Loubière, envoy extraordinary from the French King in 1687
and 1688 to the King of Siam, says in his narrative that the use of
the umbrella was granted by the sovereign to certain highly honoured
subjects. An umbrella with several rings of very wide expansion was
the prerogative of the king alone, but to certain nobles was granted
by princely condescension the right to have their heads and faces
screened from the sun by smaller shades. In his quaint old French, M.
de la Loubière says that in the audience-chamber of the king:--“Pour
tout meuble il n’y a que trois para-sols, un devant la fenêtre, á neuf
ronds, et deux á sept ronds aux deux côtéz de la fenêtre. Le para-sol
est en ce Pais là, ce que le Dais est en celui-ci”--that is to say, a
mark of the highest power.
The Mahratta princes had the title of “Lords of the Umbrella.” The
chàta of these princes is large and heavy, and requires a special
attendant to hold it, in whose custody this symbol of sovereignty
reposes.
In Ava it seems to have been part of the royal title that the sovereign
was “King of the White Elephant and Lord of Twenty-four Umbrellas.” In
1855 the King of Burmah directed a letter to the Marquis of Dalhousie
in which he styles himself “His glorious and most excellent Majesty,
reigning over the umbrella-wearing princes of the East.”
Among the Arabs the umbrella is a mark of distinction. Niebuhr says
that it is a privilege confined to princes of the blood to use an
umbrella.[24]
In the East the umbrella has come to be regarded as connected with
royalty as much as the crown and the throne; and among the Buddhists
it has remained so. Four feet from the throne of the Great Mogul, as
described by Tavernier, were two spread umbrellas of red velvet fringed
with pearls, the sticks of which were wreathed with pearls. Du Halde
says that in the Imperial palace at Pekin there were umbrellas always
ready for the Emperor; and when he rode out, a canopy was borne on two
sticks over his head to shade him and his horse. Of Sultan Mohammed
Aladdin we are told that he adopted insignia of majesty hitherto used
in India and Persia and unknown in Islam; among these was a canopy
or umbrella held over his head when he went abroad. Of one Sultan’s
umbrella we are told that it was of yellow embroidered with gold and
surmounted by a silver dove.
But as the umbrella was the symbol of majesty held over the king’s
head, it behoved the royal palace to imitate the same, and by its
structure show to all that it was the seat of majesty. Thus came
into use the cupola or dome, and what was given to the king’s house
was given also to the temples. In Perret and Chapui’s conjectural
reconstruction of the temple of Belus, near Babylon, above the seven
stages of the mighty pyramid, is the shrine of the god surmounted by a
dome. In all likelihood this really was the apex of the pyramid; the
dome was a structural umbrella held over the supreme god.