(M93) In Auvergne fires are everywhere kindled on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent. Every village, every hamlet, even every ward, every isolated farm has its bonfire or _figo_, as it is called, which blazes up as the shades of night are falling. The fires may be seen flaring on the heights and in the plains; the people dance and sing round about them and leap through the flames. Then they proceed to the ceremony of the _Grannas-mias_. A _granno-mio_(274) is a torch of straw fastened to the top of a pole. When the pyre is half consumed, the bystanders kindle the torches at the expiring flames and carry them into the neighbouring orchards, fields, and gardens, wherever there are fruit-trees. As they march they sing at the top of their voices, “_Granno, mo mio,_ _Granno, mon pouère,_ _Granno, mo mouère!_” that is, “Grannus my friend, Grannus my father, Grannus my mother.” Then they pass the burning torches under the branches of every tree, singing, “_Brando, brandounci_ _Tsaque brantso, in plan panei!_” that is, “Firebrand burn; every branch a basketful!” In some villages the people also run across the sown fields and shake the ashes of the torches on the ground; also they put some of the ashes in the fowls’ nests, in order that the hens may lay plenty of eggs throughout the year. When all these ceremonies have been performed, everybody goes home and feasts; the special dishes of the evening are fritters and pancakes.(275) Here the application of the fire to the fruit-trees, to the sown fields, and to the nests of the poultry is clearly a charm intended to ensure fertility; and the Granno to whom the invocations are addressed, and who gives his name to the torches, may possibly be, as Dr. Pommerol suggests,(276) no other than the ancient Celtic god Grannus, whom the Romans identified with Apollo, and whose worship is attested by inscriptions found not only in France but in Scotland and on the Danube.(277) If the name Grannus is derived, as the learned tell us, from a root meaning “to glow, burn, shine,”(278) the deity who bore the name and was identified with Apollo may well have been a sun-god; and in that case the prayers addressed to him by the peasants of the Auvergne, while they wave the blazing, crackling torches about the fruit-trees, would be eminently appropriate. For who could ripen the fruit so well as the sun-god? and what better process could be devised to draw the blossoms from the bare boughs than the application to them of that genial warmth which is ultimately derived from the solar beams? Thus the fire-festival of the first Sunday in Lent, as it is observed in Auvergne, may be interpreted very naturally and simply as a religious or rather perhaps magical ceremony designed to procure a due supply of the sun’s heat for plants and animals. At the same time we should remember that the employment of fire in this and kindred ceremonies may have been designed originally, not so much to stimulate