NEEDFIRE (Ger. nothfeuer; allied to Sw. gnida, to rub; Eng. knead), fire obtained by the friction of wood upon wood, or the friction of a rope on a stake of wood, to which a wide-spread superstition assigns peculiar virtues. With varieties of detail, the practice of raising needfire in cases a calamity, particularly of disease among cattle, has been found to exist among most nations of the Indo-European race. It has been supposed effectual to defeat the sorcery to which the disease is assigned. When the incantation is taking place, all the finis in the neighborhood must be extinguished, and they have all to be relighted from the sacred spark. In various parts of the Scottish highlands the rais ing of needfire was practiced not long ago, and it is perhaps still had recourse to in some very remote localities. The sacrifice of a heifer was thought necessary to insure its efficiency. The ways of obtaining fire from wood have been various; one is by an appa
ratus which has been called the " fire-churn," a cylinder turning on a pivot, and furnished with spokes, by means of which it is made to revolve very rapidly, and fire is generated by the friction. Fire struck from metal has been supposed not to possess the same virtue, and in some instances the persons who performed the ceremony were required t6 divest themselves of any might be about them. In its origin the fire-churn was considered a model of the apparatus by which the fires of heaven were daily rekindled. It is still in daily use in the temples of the Hindus. The same superstition was doubtless the origin of the story of Prometheus (q.v.). See Grimm's Deutsche Mythologic; Supple ment to Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary.