the latter pair it is vice versa. This inversion explains, by Uspensky, the fact that in some areas Nikola's Dad is celebrated on the day after his son's feast, rather than on the eve of it. In that way, the "dragon" (Nikola) comes before the "dragon fighter" (Nikola's Dad), as is the case with Stari Badnjak and Mladi Božić. Serbian ethnologist Petar Vlahović has proposed that the noun badnjak and the related adjective badnji (attributive "Christmas Eve") are derived from the root of the verb bdeti ("to be awake"), referring to a custom of staying awake through the night before Christmas Day. The same etymology of the adjective badnji has also been proposed by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, 19th-century Serbian philologist, systematizer of oral literature, and ethnographer. Similar European traditions The custom that a family solemnly brings a log into the house and lights it on the hearth on Christmas Eve has been recorded in various parts of Europe. In England, a Yule log used to be festively kindled on the domestic hearth so "that sweet luck may come while the log is a-teending", as described by 17th-century poet Robert Herrick. In France, the log had different regional names: chalendal, calignaou, tréfoir, and tréfouet. In Provence, it had to be cut from a fruit tree; it was brought in by the whole family while they sang a carol praying for blessing on the house, that the women might bear children, the nanny-goats kids, and the ewes lambs, and that their grain and wine might abound. Before the log was placed on the fire, the youngest child in the family poured wine on it. Logs were devotionally laid on the domestic fire on Christmas Eve in various parts of Italy; in Tuscany, Christmas is called Festa di Ceppo, literally "feast of log". In the Val di Chiana, the children of the family were blindfolded and commanded to beat the burning log with tongs. Traces of Christmas-log customs can also be found in Germany and Scandinavia. In Thuringia the family placed a Christklotz (Christ log) on the fire before going to bed, so that it might burn all through the night. In Croatian tradition, objects of two different types are referred to as badnjak. The first type includes leaved branches cut from Turkey oaks or hazel trees, up to long with as many catkins as possible. Such a branch used to be placed