house till a late, or rather an early, hour, the next morning.”(724) (M247) The custom was known as Wassailing and it was believed to have a beneficial effect on the crops.(725) According to one Herefordshire informant, “on Twelfth Day they make twelve fires of straw and one large one to burn the old witch; they sing, drink, and dance round it; without this festival they think they should have no crop.”(726) This explanation of the large fire on Twelfth Day is remarkable and may supply the key to the whole custom of kindling fires on the fields or in the orchards on that day. We have seen that witches and fiends of various sorts are believed to be let loose during the Twelve Days and that in some places they are formally driven away on Twelfth Night.(727) It may well be that the fires lighted on that day were everywhere primarily intended to burn the witches and other maleficent beings swarming invisible in the mischief-laden air, and that the benefit supposed to be conferred by the fires on the crops was not so much the positive one of quickening the growth of vegetation by genial warmth as the negative one of destroying the baleful influences which would otherwise blast the fruits of the earth and of the trees. This interpretation of the English and French custom of lighting fires in fields and orchards on Twelfth Night is confirmed by a parallel custom observed by Macedonian peasants for the express purpose of burning up certain malicious fiends, who are believed to be abroad at this season. These noxious beings are known as _Karkantzari_ or _Skatsantzari_. They are thought to be living people, whether men or women, who during the Twelve Days are transformed into horrible monsters, with long nails, red faces, bloodshot eyes, snottering noses, and slobbering mouths. In this hideous guise they roam about by night haunting houses and making the peasant’s life well-nigh unbearable; they knock at the doors and should they be refused admittance they will scramble down the chimney and pinch, worry, and defile the sleepers in their beds. The only way to escape from these tormenters is to seize and bind them fast with a straw rope. If you have no such rope or your heart fails you, there is nothing for it but to shut yourself up in the house before dark, fasten the door tight, block up the chimney, and wait for daylight; for it is only at night that the monsters are on the prowl, during the day they resume their ordinary human shape. However, in some places strenuous efforts are made during the Twelve Days to destroy these hateful nocturnal goblins by fire. For example, on Christmas Eve some people burn the _Karkantzari_ by lighting faggots of holm-oak and throwing them out into the streets at early dawn. In other places, notably at Melenik, they scald the fiends to death on New Year’s Eve by means of pancakes frizzling and hissing in a pan. While the goodwife is baking the cakes, the goodman disguises himself as one of the