Flaring

"This consists in a waving motion backward and forward, sometimes like a fan, sometimes like a long scroll flying in the wind, over which flaring waves chase each other with such velocity that the eye refuses to follow their trembling flight. It is, no doubt, this characteristic of sudden and seemingly capricious motion which has given rise in the imagination to the dragons, demons and giants, to the elvish " merry dancers " of the Shetlanders, to the Valkyries of the Norsemen, and to the ghostly gambols of the departed spirits of the Eskimos, to all the wealth of myth and folk-lore which touched the hearts and quickened the imaginations of the long forgotten forefathers of these northern tribes."

"[…] those shootings of stars, eclipses of the moon, howlings of dogs, and flarings of candles, carefully noted and interpreted by the oracular sibyls […]"

"Separate research suggests a switch from the flaring of methane to venting may be behind some of these vast outpourings. Flaring is used to burn unwanted gas, putting CO₂ into the atmosphere, but is easy to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon in recent years."