Folk Beliefs About Firewood: What Latvian Ancestors Said About Chopping, Splitting and Burning
The Latvian newspaper Latvijas Avīze has compiled seven traditional Latvian beliefs about preparing and burning firewood. They cover the timing of chopping, weather forecasts, a householder's qualities and news signalled by burning logs.
As the heating season gets under way, the Latvian newspaper Latvijas Avīze has published a collection of seven traditional Latvian beliefs about firewood, how to prepare it and how to burn it. The piece presents them as light reading for anyone who stokes a stove or hearth, and asks whether they might prove useful.
Chopping and splitting
The first belief holds that firewood should be chopped during the waning moon, because it then dries faster and burns better. The second links chopping to the weather: if fine splinters fly while wood is being chopped, a cold spell is expected. The third concerns splitting: a person whose logs split easily is said to be a good householder.
Logs in the fire
The fourth belief says that crackling logs mean the person who lit the fire is sinful. The fifth predicts a guest if a burning log falls out of the stove. According to the sixth, a log that whistles as it burns signals that new tidings are coming.
The seventh returns to the weather: if wood burns poorly, bad weather is expected, while crackling during burning means the weather will change.
The source offers no explanations or evidence for these sayings, so they are best read as folk tradition rather than verified fact. The material appeared in the paper's Kokteilis section, with the byline of the magazine Praktiskais Latvietis, published by the company AS Latvijas Mediji.
