_Grihya-Sûtras_, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. p. 283 (_Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxix.).
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,” _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) p. 1.
F. S. Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven_ (Vienna, 1885), p. 430.
This saying was communicated to me by Miss Mabel Peacock in a letter dated Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 30th October 1905.
Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken_ (Stuttgart, 1882), pp. 52, 59; L. v. Schroeder, _op. cit._ pp. 129, 132.
As it is believed that fire may impregnate human beings, so conversely some people seem to imagine that it may be impregnated by them. Thus Mr. T. R. Glover, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, writes to me (18th June 1906): “A curious and not very quotable instance of (I suppose) Sacred Marriage was brought to my notice by Mr. Brown of the Canadian Baptist Mission to the Telugus. He said that in Hindoo temples (in South India chiefly?) sometimes a scaffolding is erected over a fire. A man and a woman are got to copulate on it and allow the human seed to fall into the fire.” But perhaps this ceremony is only another way of conveying the fertilising virtue of the fire to the woman, in other words, of getting her with child.
Suidas, Harpocration, and _Etymologicum Magnum_, _s.v._ Ἀμφιδρόμια; Hesychius, _s.v._ δρομάφιον ἧμαρ; Schol. on Plato, _Theaetetus_, p. 160 E. On this custom see S. Reinach, _Cultes, mythes, et religions_, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 137-145. He suggests that the running of the naked men who carried the babies was intended, by means of sympathetic magic, to impart to the little ones in after-life the power of running fast. But this theory does not explain why the race took place round the hearth.
The custom has been practised with this intention in Scotland, China, New Britain, the Tenimber and Timorlaut Islands, and by the Ovambo of South Africa. See Pennant’s “Second Tour in Scotland,” Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, iii. 383; Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, _In the Hebrides_, ed. 1883, p. 101; _China Review_, ix. (1880-1881) p. 303; R. Parkinson, _Im Bismarck-Archipel_, pp. 94 _sq._; J. G. F. Riedel, _De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 303; H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, p. 307. A similar custom was observed, probably for the same reason, in ancient Mexico and in Madagascar. See Clavigero, _History of Mexico_, translated by Cullen, i. 31; W. Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 152. Compare my note, “The Youth of Achilles,” _Classical Review_, vii. (1893) pp. 293 _sq._