quantity of evidence for prayers being addressed to the stove, and for the
solemn provision of food offerings to the fire with the expectation of good
will in return.^102
In Lithuania, as fifteenth-century sources attest, priests maintained a
perpetual holy fire, worshipped as ‘Vulcanus’, at which they practised
divination.^103 Eighteenth-century lexica say that the heathens’ Vulcanus was
called Jagaubis or Ugnis szwenta (‘holy Fire’).^104 Ugnis‘fire’, the cognate of
agníh
̇
,ignis, Slavonic ogonı ̆, is feminine in Lithuanian, and the fire was in fact
venerated as a female deity. An archaic, elevated word or name for it/her was
gabè or gabija,sˇventa Gabija. Jan Łasicki (Lasicius) in his De Diis Samagi-
tarum (1580) records a prayer to be addressed to the house-fire, ‘Gabie
Deuaite’, that is, ‘Fire, daughter of God’, if damp weather prevented the
harvested grain from drying out. He also mentions a goddess Polengabia or
Pelengabia, ‘Hearth-fire’.^105 Another title by which the fire was addressed was
sˇventa Ponìke ̇, ‘holy Mistress’.^106 In Latvia, predictably, the goddess became
Uguns ma ̄te, ‘the Mother of Fire’.^107
A tenth-century Persian geographer states that the Slavs (S
̇
aqla ̄b) all
venerate fire, and more recent literary sources and ethnographic evidence
attest fire-worship or prayers to the fire among various Slavonic peoples.^108
The house fire was especially honoured in Ukraine and Belarus.^109
It has often been assumed, and with reason, that the cult of the hearth goes
back to Indo-European times.^110 The hearth fire was the indispensable centre
and defining point of the home. It had to be tended with care and given
offerings at appropriate times. If one moved to a new house, one carried fire
there from the old one. New members of the household, such as a newborn
child or a new bride, had to be introduced to the hearth fire by being led or
carried round it. The custom that the bride circles the hearth three times is
common to Indians, Ossetes, Slavs, Balts, and Germans.^111
(^102) von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 575–9; de Vries (1956), i. 176 f., 360 f.
(^103) Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) and Johannes Długosz in Mannhardt (1936),
135, 139 = Clemen (1936), 104, 105.
(^104) Mannhardt (1936), 610 f., who takes Jagaubis to be a corrupt form of Gabjaujis, a god of
crops who also protected against fire (cf. ibid. 572 f.).
(^105) Mannhardt (1936), 359, cf. 372, 389; 357, ‘Polengabia diva est, cui foci lucentis administra-
tio creditur’.
(^106) Ibid. 254, 546.
(^107) Ibid. 622.
(^108) C. H. Meyer (1931), 95. 3; 18. 21 (Cosmas of Prague), 21. 4, 69. 34; von Schroeder
(1914–16), ii. 579; Unbegaun (1948), 426; Vánˇa (1992), 57 f., 69, 117–20, 231 (offerings).
(^109) Gimbutas (1971), 162; Vánˇa (1992), 118.
(^110) Cf. Kretschmer (1896), 91 f.; von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 589–91; de Vries (1956),
i. 176 f.; A. Della Volpe, JIES 18 (1990), 157–66.
(^111) Cf. von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 574 f., 589–91; Mannhardt (1936), 254–6, 296 f., 363; de
Vries (1956), i. 177; Biezais–Balys (1973), 410; N. Reiter in Wb. d. Myth. i(2), 180.
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