CHAPTER XIII

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FUNERAL RITES.

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If I have made clear the corporate character of the clan, or _gens_, as conceived by savage thought, the reader will have understood how completely the clan is regarded as an unity, literally and not metaphorically one body, the individual members of which are as truly portions as the fingers or the legs are portions of the external, visible body of each of them. We saw in previous chapters that a severed limb, a lock of hair or a nail-clipping, was still regarded as in some invisible but real union with the body whereof it once, in outward appearance also, formed part; and any injury inflicted on the severed portion was inflicted on the bulk. The individual member of a clan was in exactly the same position as a lock of hair cut from the head, or an amputated limb. He had no separate significance, no value apart from his kin. More than that: as we shall see hereafter, injury inflicted on him was inflicted on, and was felt by, the whole kin, just as an injury inflicted on the severed lock or limb was felt by the bulk. This unity of the clan is constantly renewed by the common meal, where the same food is partaken of, and becomes incorporated into the essence of all who share it. In strictness commensal rights belong {278} only to the kin. To eat together means to be of the same flesh and blood, for none others could do so. Such a rule of course came to be modified as soon as hospitality was recognised as a duty or a privilege. But the stranger admitted as a guest to the meal became by that act a temporary member of the kin. The rights conceded to him so long as he remained a guest were the rights of kinship, and entailed corresponding liabilities. He could not, however, share the common meal in its most solemn form, namely, the totem sacrifice, without becoming a blood-brother, and thus entering the kin as a permanent member. In mingling his blood with the blood of the clan, and feeding with them on the totem-animal, he became one with them as much as if he had been already united with them in a common descent. Abandoning his former country and kin and worship, he identified himself with a new organism having a different domicile with different rights and interests and a different cult.

The common meal was thus the pledge and witness of the unity of the kin, because it was the chief means, if not of making, at least of repairing and renewing it. And its importance is emphasised everywhere by its repetition upon every solemn occasion, and by its forming the centre of the entire ritual. This may be taken for granted of many such occasions; but it may seem strange to assign it a position so prominent in some. It is not obvious, for instance, how it can be the most important act of a funeral. The funeral feast, however, is probably universal; and in savage communities it is difficult to overrate its significance. The most archaic form, if barbarity be a test of archaism, in which it is known to us, is where the meat is nothing less than the corpse of the departed kinsman. Cannibalism in {279} any form excites so much horror in civilised mankind that we hesitate to believe it is a stage through which we have all passed. But it is certainly a custom very widely spread and characteristic of a low plane of culture. We cannot, and we need not, now discuss cannibalism in general. Of all the forms it has ever assumed, the most horrible is that of the eating of the bodies of our nearest and dearest; and that is the form we have to consider.

In considering it, and recalling, as we must, some of the repulsive details of the rite, we cannot do better than begin by reminding ourselves of the anecdote related by Herodotus of the Persian king, Darius, to illustrate the power of custom. He tells us that the monarch once called into his presence some Greeks, who were in the habit of burning their dead, and asked them for what reward they would be willing to devour the bodies of their parents. They replied, of course, that nothing would induce them to do such a thing. Then summoning certain Kalatiai, an Indian people who used to eat their dead, in the presence of the Greeks (who were informed by an interpreter of what was being said) he put the converse question to them, for how much they would burn their deceased parents. They, on the other hand, broke out into exclamations, begging him to desist from such ill-omened language. Leaving the moral of this story to be digested as we proceed, we may review some of the other accounts by ancient and modern travellers of the practice under consideration. The Father of History ascribes it not only to the Kalatiai. Among Indian peoples he mentions the Padaioi, concerning whom he furnishes us with a little more detail. The Padaioi were a race of nomads alleged to feed on raw flesh. When any of the tribesmen fell sick they were {280} mercilessly put to death by their most intimate associates, by which expression is perhaps meant their fellow-clansmen. The men were killed by the men, and the women by the women. They sacrificed all who arrived at old age, and feasted upon them. But these were not numerous, because they slaughtered every one attacked by disease. That even the latter were intended to be eaten is clear from the reason for putting them to death, namely, that otherwise as they were wasted by sickness their flesh would be utterly spoilt.[280.1] In this respect they differed for the worse from the Massagetai, the Scythian nation whose fierce and masculine queen overcame the mighty Cyrus. They only ate the aged. Those who died of disease they stowed away in the earth, accounting it a misfortune that they had not come to be sacrificed. The kindred of an old man would assemble and immolate him, as well as other animals at the same time; and then boiling the flesh all together they would feast upon it. The Issedones, also Scythians, seem to have been somewhat less savage, for we gather that they waited until a natural death removed the aged. When once a man’s father was dead, the rite, however, was not different from that of the Massagetai, save that we are told they preserved the skull, set it in gold, and used it at their solemn yearly festivals.[280.2] Herodotus is not the only writer of antiquity who attributes this kind of {281} cannibalism to savage tribes. The geographer Strabo likewise records of the Derbikes in the Caucasus that the men of seventy and upwards were put to death and eaten by their nearest kinsmen, but the women were buried; for they never used for food the flesh of any female animal. And the ancient Irish, more savage, he tells us, than the Britons, considered it praiseworthy to devour their dead fathers, though he admits very fairly that his authority for the statement is not decisive.[281.1] In the Middle Ages Marco Polo found a tribe in Tartary, whose capital he calls Chandul, who used to cook and eat men condemned to death. Those who died by natural means, on the other hand, they did not eat.[281.2] It is doubtful whether he refers to criminals as thus eaten; and he is silent as to who joined in the feast. No such ambiguity attaches to the usage reported by the Venetian adventurer as existing in the kingdom of Deragola on the island of Sumatra. The savages of this kingdom, when any kinsman fell sick, used to send for their shamans, who made incantations to ascertain whether he would recover. If the answer were favourable, nature was left to do her best; if unfavourable, they sent for the professional slaughterman, by whom he was suffocated and cooked. The next of kin then assembled and devoured him, afterwards enclosing his bones in a coffin, which was put away in a mountain cavern.[281.3] Less authentic are the accounts preserved by the author of Sir John Maundeville’s travels concerning the East Indian islands. He attributes a similar practice to the inhabitants of islands he calls Caffolos and Dondun. Of that of Rybothe he relates that a dead body is given {282} to the birds of prey, but that the son of the deceased makes a feast, and serves the flesh of the head to his particular friends, making a drinking cup of the skull, which he uses for the rest of his life.[282.1] Other mediæval writers ascribe the same species of cannibalism to Tibetan tribes.[282.2]

These statements have received confirmation in modern times from the reports of travellers among tribes in the lower savagery almost everywhere. As in the older writers, there is some ambiguity on the question who was expected or entitled to partake of the horrible food. A comparison, however, of the accounts clearly shows that it was originally confined to the clan, though possibly the melancholy satisfaction of uniting oneself with the departed in this manner may, in different places, have been extended by special favour to intimate friends not belonging to the kin, or, by a modification of tribal customs, to the entire local organisation. Not to weary the reader I have selected in a note at the foot of the page a number of references to cases where the rite is reported to exist in full force;[282.3] and I now propose {283} to examine some changes and adaptations of its form down to its latest survivals in the folklore of civilised Europe.

But first of all we may take note of some observances among the American aborigines, which, though not connected with funerals, afford us a glimpse of the sacramental {284} character of a feast upon a kinsman’s body. The Totonacas, a tribe of the Mexican Chichimecs, used to slay periodically three of their children and mix the blood with certain herbs from the temple-garden, and the sap of the _Cassidea elastica_, into the consistency of dough, which was called _toyoliayt la quatl_ (Food of our Life). Every six months all adults of the tribe were required to partake of it as a kind of Eucharist. And the compiler, from whom I take the account, sarcastically adds: “They thus partook of human blood without previous miraculous transformation.” The Cacivos of Peru are also said to sacrifice and eat a voluntary victim every year.[284.1] The Aztecs and the peoples allied to them are infamous for the hideous barbarity of their human sacrifices; and indeed it is incalculable what benefits were conferred on these unhappy nations in the softening of manners and the refinement of character, not to mention the salvation of immortal souls, when the sanguinary rites of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli were swept away, to make room for the Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass and the hecatombs of the Holy Inquisition. Among the Aztecs a prisoner of war was esteemed his captor’s son. He was generally sacrificed at the feast of Xipetotec, deity of the goldsmiths, and Huitzilopochtli. The body was returned to the captor, who cut it up and divided it between {285} his superiors, relations and friends, not tasting it himself, because “he counted it as the flesh of his own body.” He gave the skin to be worn for twenty days by another, who went about during that time collecting gifts for the captor. At another festival of Huitzilopochtli a dough statue of the god was made with certain seeds and the blood of children. It was formally “killed” at the conclusion of the ceremonies, by means of a flint-tipped dart, and then cut up and eaten by the male part of the population. This was called the killing and eating of the god.[285.1] Nor can we doubt that we have in these rites vestiges of totemistic feasts at which the totem-victim was not improbably represented by a kinsman.

We return to funeral feasts. The Fans of Equatorial West Africa have repeatedly been charged with this kind of cannibalism, but, while asserting it of their neighbours, have always denied it of themselves. The solution seems to lie in the fact that they sell their dead to the Osebas, who are recognised as a kindred race, and buy in return Oseba bodies for the purpose of consumption.[285.2] In short, repugnance to eat their own relatives has sprung up, without entire abandonment of anthropophagy. A curious compromise between burial in the earth and in the bodies of living members of the tribe appears in an account of the ceremonies on the death of a recent king of the Bangala. He was cut in two lengthwise, and another man slain for the purpose was treated in like manner. One half of the one, and a half of the other, were then put together, so as to {286} form an entire man, and buried. The remaining halves were stewed with manioc and bananas and eaten with other sacrifices.[286.1] In some cases the flesh of the dead is only eaten in the delirium of grief, or as a mark of particular affection. The latter is related to have frequently happened on the demise of a Hawaiian chief.[286.2] For the same reason mothers, among the Botocudos of South America, ate their dead children.[286.3] While in California the Gallinomero burnt the body immediately life became extinct; and the frenzy of survivors reached such a pitch that one of them has been seen to rush up to the pyre, snatch a handful of blazing flesh, and devour it on the spot.[286.4] A method of consuming the corpse adopted by the savage tribes inhabiting the valley of the Uaupes, a tributary of the Amazons, is described by Dr. Wallace. Their houses are generally built to accommodate the entire community; and the dead are buried beneath the floor. About a month after the funeral, Dr. Wallace tells us, the survivors “disinter the corpse, which is then much decomposed, and put it in a great pan, or oven, over the fire, till all the volatile parts are driven off with a most horrible odour, leaving only a black carbonaceous mass, which is pounded into a fine powder, and mixed in several large _couchés_ (vats made of hollowed trees) of a fermented drink called _caxirí_; this is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished; they believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers.” Similar customs are reported of {287} other South American peoples.[287.1] Among the Koniagas, an Eskimo tribe of Alaska and the adjacent islands, when a whaler dies, one method of disposing of his body is to place it in a cave. There his fellow-craftsmen congregate, before setting out upon a chase. They take the body out, immerse it in a stream and then drink of the water.[287.2]

Speaking generally, the practice of eating a dead kinsman, which is probably the earliest form of cannibalism, is also the earliest form to be abandoned. In the South Sea Islands, for example, where the custom of eating strangers has continued until recent years, the flesh of one’s own tribesmen is rejected, save in rare instances, such as that of Hawaii. In the Banks’ Islands it is occasionally eaten, in order to establish communion with a dead man for magical purposes: a practice likewise known in Australia.[287.3] But though the custom changes, the sacramental idea underlying it is retained; and the problem would be how to effect the necessary union between the dead and the living without partaking of the body. On the island of Vate, in the New Hebrides, the aged were put to death by burying them alive. A hole was dug, and the victim placed within it in a sitting posture, a live pig tied to each arm. Before closing the grave, the cords were cut; and the pigs were afterwards killed and served up at the funeral feast.[287.4] In this way they seem to be identified with the corpse.

In Europe, where flesh is not consumed ceremonially at {288} the funeral feast, other means even more expressive are taken to ensure the same object. In the Balkan peninsula the rites are very significant. In Albania, cakes of boiled wheat and other ingredients are carried in the funeral procession, and eaten by the mourners upon the grave as soon as it is filled up. All expressions of sorrow are repressed as sinful while it is being eaten; and as each person takes his share he says: “May he (or she) be forgiven!”[288.1] In some parts of the peninsula the cakes bear the image of the dead. They are broken up and eaten upon the tomb immediately after interment, every mourner pronouncing the words: “God rest him!”[288.2] At Calymnos, among the Greeks, the funeral, as elsewhere, takes place on the day of death. Kólyva cakes like those in Albania are then made, and are guarded in the house of the departed all night, with two lighted candles, by a watcher who must not go to sleep. The next day they are carried first to the church and then to the tomb, on which they are set to be distributed. The eating of Kólyva cakes is repeated with similar ceremonies on the third, ninth and fortieth days, and again at the end of three, six and nine months and of one, two and three years, after death.[288.3] It is impossible to {289} mistake the meaning of these practices: the image of the dead upon the cakes, the acts of carrying them in the funeral procession and eating them upon the grave, elsewhere the night-watching, and everywhere the cessation of mourning and the pious exclamations during eating, all admit of but one interpretation.

The ritual eating of special food is used at funerals in many countries. Pulse is not mentioned as an ingredient of the Kólyva cakes. It was, however, an important part of the funeral feasts of the Romans; and Mr. F. B. Jevons, commenting on Plutarch, has quoted Porphyry’s statement, that Pythagoras bade his followers “abstain from beans as from human flesh,” and the reason mentioned by Pliny as entertained by some for the prohibition, namely, that the souls of the dead are in them.[289.1] The various taboos and other superstitions connected with beans point to the correctness of this reason, and tend to show that pulse was in some way identified with human flesh. In the French provinces of Berry and the Marche, a plate of beans, or of dried peas, always figures among the provisions of the funeral banquet.[289.2] In the Marches of Italy the family on returning from the burial-ground sit down together to a large plate of beans.[289.3] In some parts of Friuli a soup of beans is distributed; in other places cakes of barley, or grated cheese. Elsewhere a loaf or cake of _pan di tremeste_, composed of rye and vetch, is given, with wine or brandy, to all who come to chant the rosary and other prayers over the corpse on the evening of death.[289.4] In the neighbourhood {290} of Rimini the feast consists of a broth of chick-pease.[290.1] But the form assumed by the ritual food is usually either cakes or fermented liquor, frequently both. Cakes called _wastê_ are eaten in the Ardennes.[290.2] In Wales it seems that a hot plum-cake fresh from the oven used to be handed round to the guests, broken in pieces, not cut with a knife. In Sardinia, on the seventh or ninth day after death, savoury cakes are prepared and sent hot from the oven to all the relatives and neighbours, and to all who have joined in the weeping for the dead, or accompanied the corpse to the tomb. The family then gathers at supper, celebrating the virtues of the deceased between the mouthfuls of food and their tears.[290.3] Dough-nuts, among the Turks, are sent to friends and to the poor on the third, seventh, and fortieth days after the funeral; and prayers for the soul are requested in return.[290.4] Bread carried in the funeral procession is distributed to the poor by the Tamil population of Ceylon.[290.5] On one of the Banks’ Islands, “when a great man dies, the people from all the villages around bring mashed yams the next morning to the place where the dead man lies and eat them there.”[290.6] Among the Abyssinians the poor receive from the banquet pieces of bread and of the entrails and liver of the animals which are served up.[290.7] {291} The Tcheremiss of the Kama and the Volga provide small pancakes, which they eat as soon as the grave is filled up, every one depositing three morsels upon the grave, saying: “This is for thee.”[291.1]

In several of the cases cited the eating of the dead has evidently undergone a natural transformation into eating with the dead. But wherever a special food is used it may be suspected to represent the flesh of the deceased. In the funeral cakes of the Balkan peninsula the identity is manifest. I shall try to show that it is the same nearer home. In various parts of England and Wales a custom of giving small sponge-cakes to the guests is yet in force. In Yorkshire and elsewhere the last part of the funeral entertainment before the procession started for the churchyard was to hand round glasses of wine and small circular crisp sponge-cakes, whereof most of the guests partook. These cakes were called “Avril-bread.” The word _Avril_ is said to be derived from _arval_, succession-ale, heir-ale, the name of the feasts given by Icelandic heirs on succeeding to property.[291.2] Now, although it might be suspected that the avril-bread represented the corpse, we should not be justified in holding that it did without more direct evidence. That evidence can fortunately be supplied, from a funeral which took place near Market Drayton in Shropshire on the 1st {292} July 1893, as described by an eye-witness. “The lady,” writes Miss Gertrude Hope, “who gave me the particulars, arrived rather early, and found the bearers enjoying a good lunch in the only downstairs room. Shortly afterwards the coffin was brought down and placed on two chairs in the centre of the room, and the mourners having gathered round it,” a short service was then and there conducted by the Nonconformist minister, as is frequently done, before setting out for the grave. “Directly the minister ended, the woman in charge of the arrangements poured out four glasses of wine and handed one to each bearer present across the coffin, with a biscuit called a ‘funeral biscuit.’ One of the bearers being absent at the moment, the fourth glass of wine and biscuit were offered to the eldest son of the deceased woman, who, however, refused to take it, and was not obliged to do so. The biscuits were ordinary sponge biscuits, usually called ‘sponge fingers’ or ‘lady’s fingers.’ They are, however, also known in the shops of Market Drayton as ‘funeral biscuits.’” These cakes are not exactly of the shape mentioned by Canon Atkinson as used in Yorkshire, but that is of no importance, because their shape varies with the place. What follows is enough to show that the scene described is not a solitary one. “The minister, who had lately come from Pembrokeshire, remarked to my informant that he was sorry to see that pagan custom still observed. He had been able to put an end to it in the Pembrokeshire village where he had formerly been.”[292.1]

Here, it will be observed, the ritual food is handed across the coffin. Pennant, writing early in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, says that in Wales “previous to a {293} funeral, it was customary, when the corpse was brought out of the house and laid upon the bier, for the next of kin, be it widow, mother, sister or daughter (for it must be a female), to give, over the coffin, a quantity of white loaves, in a great dish, and sometimes a cheese, with a piece of money stuck in it, to certain poor persons. After that, they present, in the same manner, a cup of drink, and require the persons to drink a little of it immediately.” The Lord’s Prayer was then repeated by the minister, if present; and the procession started.[293.1] We can have little doubt that this was the same custom. A hundred years earlier still it was witnessed by John Aubrey at Beaumaris. He mentions it as occurring when the corpse is brought out of doors. The food consisted of cake and cheese, with “a new Bowle of Beere, and another of Milke with ye Anno Dni ingraved on it, & ye parties name deceased.” And Dr. Kennett, who annotated his manuscript, refers to a practice at Amersden, in Oxfordshire, of bringing to the minister in the church-porch after the interment a cake and a flagon of ale.[293.2] In Wales and the Welsh border the custom underwent a curious development. It became, for some cause, a profession to eat this funeral meal, and thereby, as was believed, to become responsible for the sins of the deceased. Aubrey describes one of these Sin-eaters, as they were called. “One of them I remember lived in a Cottage on Rosse-high way. (He was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal.) The manner was that when the Corps was brought out of the house and layd on the Biere, a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the corps, as also a Mazar-bowle of maple (Gossips bowle) full of beer, wch he was to drinke up, and {294} sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.”[294.1] The profession of Sin-eater and the full ceremony, pagan enough in all conscience, have vanished from the earth only within the lifetime of persons yet living. The most modern account of it was given by Mr. Matthew Moggridge of Swansea to the Cambrian Archaeological Association at Ludlow in the year 1852. He said that “when a person died, the friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s. 6d.” (a modest fee for the service, all things considered, though it had risen since Aubrey’s day), “and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony, he was utterly detested in the neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one irredeemably lost.” Mr. Moggridge specified the neighbourhood of Llandebie, about twelve or thirteen miles from Swansea, as a place where the custom had survived to within a recent period.[294.2]

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Thus in our own country we find the relics of a ritual feast, where food is placed upon the coffin, or rather upon the body itself, or handed across it, and so in a manner identified with it, and where it is expressly believed that by the act of eating some properties of the dead are taken over by the eater. Let us now turn back for a moment to the East. At a Hindu funeral in Sindh the relations, in the course of the march to the place of burning, throw dry dates into the air over the corpse. These, we are told, are considered as a kind of alms, and are left to the poor. On returning to the house, after the cremation, the first thing done is to offer the couch, bedding, and some clothes of the deceased to a Karnigor who is in attendance. A Karnigor is a low caste-man,--according to some, the offspring of a Brahman father and a Sudra mother. North of Hydrabad his appearance and conduct resemble those of the servile, south of that city those of the priestly, order. The condition of the gift is, that the Karnigor must eat a certain sweetmeat prepared for the occasion. If he refuse, the ghost of the dead man would haunt the place. This means that the funeral rites would have been incomplete. The Karnigor has, therefore, the game in his own hands; and, rejecting the first advance, he demands not only all the articles of dress left by the departed, but fees into the bargain. “When his avarice is satiated, he eats four or five mouthfuls of the sweetmeat, seldom more, for fear of the spirit. After this, he carries off his plunder, taking care not to look behind him, as the Pinniyaworo [head mourner] and the person who prepared the confectionery {296} wait until he is fifteen or twenty paces off, break up all the earthen cooking pots that have been used, and throw three of the broken pieces at him, in token of abhorrence.”[296.1] Can we fail to be reminded of the Sin-eater? Nor is this the most remarkable parallel to be found in India. The burning of the corpse of a king of Tanjore who died in 1801, and of two of his widows chosen for the purpose by the Brahmans, is described by the abbé Dubois. He states that a part of the bones which escaped the fury of the flames was reduced to powder, and this powder, having been mixed with boiled rice, was eaten by twelve Brahmans. The reason for the proceeding is put by the abbé almost in the very words I quoted in the last paragraph. The act “had for its object the expiation of the sins of the defunct persons: sins which, according to common opinion, are transmitted into the bodies of those whom the allurement of gain has induced to surmount the repugnance that a food so detestable should inspire. Moreover, people are persuaded that the money which is the price of this base condescension is never of any profit to them.”[296.2] If any doubt could remain as to the meaning of the Welsh custom, this would be enough to dissipate it. But in truth it is not needed; for we have in Europe other usages that set the meaning in the clearest light. In the Highlands of Bavaria, when the corpse is placed upon the bier, the room is carefully {297} washed out and cleaned. Formerly it was the custom for the housewife then to prepare the _Leichen-nudeln_, or Corpse-cakes. Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, as it lay there enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared, the belief attached that they contained the virtues and advantages of the departed, and that thus the living strength of the deceased passed over, by means of the corpse-cakes, into the kinsmen who consumed them, and so was retained within the kindred.[297.1] Here we find ourselves at an earlier stage in the disintegration of tradition than in the Welsh practice. The identification of the food with the dead man is not merely symbolic. The dough in rising is believed actually to absorb his qualities, which are transmitted to those of his kin who partake of the cakes; and--consistently with the requirement that the relatives eat the cakes--the qualities transferred are held to be not evil but good ones: the living strength, the virtues and so on of the dead are retained within the kin. Not less striking than the resemblance just pointed out between the objects of the Hindu and the Welsh rites, is that between the objects of {298} the Bavarian custom and that of the Tariánas and other tribes of the Uaupes for consuming the pounded remains of their kinsmen in their caxirí. In both cases, indeed, there is more than resemblance. The objects are absolutely the same; and it is inconceivable that the European usages wherewith we are dealing had any other origin than a cannibal feast, the material of which was the very body of the deceased kinsman.

It is natural to inquire whether any trace of this cannibalism lingers among the Irish, who alone among European races have been charged with it. There is a trace, though it must be admitted a fainter trace than we have found on this side of Saint George’s Channel. Yet I think when we compare it with the latter we shall conclude that it is enough, and therefore that in all probability Strabo’s accusation was not unfounded. The drinking which goes on at a wake is of course a relic of the funeral feast. It takes place in the presence of the corpse. A foreigner, describing a nobleman’s obsequies which he witnessed at Shrewsbury in the early years of King Charles the Second, states that the minister made a funeral oration in the chamber where the body lay, and “during the oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of wine, out of which every one drank to the health of the deceased. This being finished six men took up the corps, and carried it on their shoulders to the church.”[298.1] I am not aware whether in Ireland the whisky is thus brought into immediate contiguity with the bier. In Connaught it was the custom about a generation ago, and probably still is, to place a plate of tobacco cut in short lengths, and a plate of snuff on the breast of the corpse; a boy stood at the door with a {299} basket of pipes, and each person helped himself according to his inclination.[299.1] Whatever may be the case as regards tobacco, I am informed by eye-witnesses that it is still an Irish custom to lay a plate of snuff on the breast of the dead; and everybody who attends the funeral is expected to take a pinch. This ceremony must have assumed its present shape in recent times; but it cannot be doubted that it represents the more archaic consumption of food or drink similarly placed.

I mentioned just now that dates were thrown, at a funeral in Sindh, over the corpse, and left to the poor. Before the funeral at Calymnos, figs and other fruit contributed by the relatives of the deceased, are carried from his house to the churchyard and there distributed among the poor.[299.2] In classic times the Greeks and Romans used to offer to the manes of the departed on the ninth day after the burial; and on the steps of the grave-monument a simple meal of milk, honey, oil and the blood of the sacrificed animals was prepared. If the tomb were large enough, there was a separate apartment provided, where the meal was consumed. As numerous guests were impossible in the limited space ordinarily available, the wealthy used often to distribute flesh-meat among the people, and in later times money.[299.3] To-day, in the Abruzzi, when a {300} maiden dies, comfits and money are distributed during the procession from the house to the church, and in some places also from the church to the graveyard, just as they are distributed during a wedding procession. This perhaps has no significance for our present inquiry; but the funeral feast which follows the burial must not be left unnoticed. Its material is provided by the most intimate friend of the dead,[300.1] who sometimes joins in it. No one else is admitted beside relatives. The table whereon the coffin has rested is the one used for the meal, and if not large enough, others are added to it to extend it. On returning to the house the party, after an interval of solemn silence, begin by telling their beads. The nearest of kin, one after the other, hand round the food, and the life and merits of the defunct are the invariable subject of conversation. They repeatedly press one another to eat and drink. This and the talk about the departed, from the way they are mentioned, appear to be important parts of the ceremony. The utensils must be returned empty and unwashed to the friend who has furnished the meal. Nothing eatable may be sent back: it must be finished by the servants and those who have taken part in the preparations for the funeral. Nor may the meal be taken in the usual room.[300.2]

Several things are noteworthy in the Abruzzian feast; and there are few readers with the ceremonies we have {301} been discussing in their minds, who will not come to the conclusion that where the solemn banquet is spread on the table where the corpse has previously lain, where there is mutual urging to eat and nothing is permitted to be left, and where the virtues of the deceased are discussed as part of the rite, there is a presumption that the feast was originally upon the flesh of the dead. Among the Masurs, though we hear nothing about the requirement to finish the food, special food is provided, which we already know as a suspicious circumstance. Combined with the other details I am about to give, I venture to think it affords fairly strong evidence as to the original character of the mortuary feast. The body is placed on a table in the middle of the room, and the neighbours and relatives assemble round it. Buns and schnaps are placed on the table for the men; and the schnaps is drunk in turn out of the same glass. The women drink it with a spoon from a bowl. Suitable religious songs are sung. After the funeral, schnaps thickened with honey is served to the women on the same table; and at the feast which follows, presumably on the same table, groats mingled with honey are a special dish. In some districts the body is covered with a table-cloth, which is afterwards put over the funeral bakemeats on the table; and no one can take them until it is removed. At the meal all drink in brandy to the everlasting rest of the departed.[301.1]

In classical times and classical lands, as we saw, the tables were spread at the tomb. At Argentière, in the department of the Hautes Alpes, France, this continues to be done immediately after the burial; and the table of the curé and the family is placed upon the grave itself. The dinner {302} ended, every one, led by the next of kin, drinks the health of the departed. Here the situation of the chief table is unambiguous. We should hesitate to say so much of the classical feast, or of the custom prescribed by the ritual of the monastery of Saint Ouen at Rouen, where after the abbot’s death a repast of spices and wine was given in his chamber.[302.1] Neither the celebration of the formal meal in the death-chamber nor at the grave is conclusive of itself. When once the practice of eating the dead was abandoned, and only a symbol of the loathsome food remained, the meaning of the symbol would tend to pass out of memory, and, according to varying circumstances, sooner or later the symbol itself would undergo change and disappear. The totem-feast, on the other hand, of which it may be plausibly maintained the cannibal feast on the dead kinsman was originally part, shorn of its most savage detail, would remain in full vigour. So far as it was a funeral observance it would receive a specific development with appropriate surroundings, and its totemistic character would gradually be forgotten. Moreover, it is possible that the cannibal feast was by no means universal at any time. However this may be, the totem-feast being a sacramental rite, a communion between the living members of a clan and their totem, one of the most obvious extensions of the sacramental idea would be that of communion with the dead. The latter would be supposed to join in the feast and partake of the food: a portion of which would accordingly be reserved for them. And as the deceased member of the clan would be supposed to be sojourning at his grave, it would of course be greatly for the convenience of all parties that the feast should be held {303} there, and the portion meant for him deposited in or upon the tomb. Death had not relieved him of the wants of life; but it had released him from certain of its limitations. The conditions of his existence were changed. While in some directions he had been deprived of power, in others he had become possessed of greater power than during life; and all beings possessed of extraordinary power were regarded with distrust. Savage man felt himself capricious, revengeful, envious, cruel. The feelings he experienced, the feelings he saw manifested in his fellow-men, he attributed to the mightier creatures of his imagination. Now life was, in his contemplation, so much more desirable than death, that the dead would naturally have been supposed to envy the living. Here was a distinct cause of ill-will. The dead man must, therefore, be kept from haunting the survivors. To that end his funeral rites must be fully and properly performed, and every precaution taken both to persuade him to stay at a distance and to prevent him from finding his way back. One means to do this was to provide him with food in or upon his sepulchre. He would thus be induced to abide there, or, as the case might be, to take his departure straight thence to the dwelling-place of spirits, and not to linger among the kindred who were anxious to be rid of him. This belief gave rise to the repetition of feasts of the dead, for the needs of the dead must be constantly supplied. Besides, to keep them in good humour would be to enlist their sympathy and their help; and who could know how much that help might mean against enemies, or in the chase, or in the operations of agriculture? Thus, not only love for the departed, and the desire for communion with them, but every other motive concurred on the one hand to provide {304} them with food, and on the other hand to consult their convenience in facilitating their enjoyment of it. The reasoning was not free from inconsistencies, because there were cross-currents of tradition. All of them did not flow from the habit of looking upon the dead as abiding permanently in their graves. Probably this was the original faith. But the belief in a separate realm of souls grew up as culture advanced, and disturbed the earlier tradition. The possibility of return to life by a new birth into the kin was another opinion that affected it. And the doctrine of Transformation must, from the most archaic times, have intervened as a modifying influence, for transformation implies locomotion. The savage did not always trouble himself to reconcile inconsistencies. His simple credulity accepted them all. We need not wonder; for even the mind of civilised and educated man is built in watertight compartments: whereof no reader will want examples.

The meal at the grave, then, or in the death-chamber, may be a meal at which the dead man is one of the convives. Instances are numerous in the lower culture. Some of them, like that of the Tcheremiss Tartars, have been mentioned; and I select a few more, out of many, further to illustrate the practice. It will be convenient to begin with the Tchuvash, whose seats are on the middle reaches of the Volga, because their customs, if correctly reported, seem, like those of the Tcheremiss, to show the eating of the dead passing over into the eating with the dead. After burial in the public cemetery the relatives deposit on the grave some cakes and a piece of cooked fowl, saying, like the Tcheremiss: “This is for thee.” The old clothes of the deceased are thrown over the tomb; and the rest of the cakes are eaten by the funeral escort, {305} by whom the repast is regarded as taken in company with the dead. On the fortieth day after burial an animal, designated by the deceased in his lifetime for that purpose, is killed. Libations are made, and half the flesh with other food is deposited on the grave. This is devoured, amid lamentations of the relatives, by dogs; “for it is believed that the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead. The feasting then begins, and eating and drinking continue until all the supplies are exhausted.”[305.1] The Tchuvash appear to be the same people of whom Hanway, in the middle of the last century, relates that they throw their dead into the open field to be devoured by dogs, of which many run wild, and some are kept for the purpose.[305.2] If the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead by eating of the memorial banquet, we are presented with a result comparable with that obtained by the Bavarian Highlanders and the Tariánas; and we may conjecture that in earlier times the deceased was eaten by the kin.

Immediately before the burial of an Ainu, millet-cakes and wine are handed round to the assembled relatives and friends. Each person “offers two or three drops of the wine to the spirit of the dead, then drinks a little, and pours what is left before the fire as an offering to the fire-goddess, all the time muttering some short prayer. Then part of the millet-cake is eaten, and the remainder hidden in the ashes upon the hearth, each person burying a little piece.” After the body has been interred these fragments are carried out of the hut and placed together before the eastern window, which is always a sacred spot.[305.3] When a {306} dead Chinaman is put into his coffin, a quantity of food is put before him, and afterwards removed and eaten by his family; and again at the burial eatables are taken from the house and set on the tomb, and subsequently brought back to be consumed at the funeral meal.[306.1] Moreover, at each of the oft-repeated memorial feasts for the departed, some of the food is first placed before the ancestral tablets, or the tombs, and then eaten by the family; and it is believed that the spirits partake of its “essential and immaterial elements.”[306.2] In the funeral rites of the Dyaks food is set before the dead ere the coffin is closed. It is allowed to stand for about an hour by the corpse, and is then devoured by the next-of-kin.[306.3] On the death of a Hungarian Gipsy he is carried out of the tent or hut. It is now the duty of the members of his clan to offer to the deceased gifts, especially food and drink, which they lay beside the body and later on themselves consume.[306.4] The Sàkalàva of Madagascar bury in a family cemetery. “A cup and a plate are placed by the side of the coffin, and every now and then the friends go in large numbers, and taking rice and rum with them, hold a feast in these cemeteries, and believe that the spirits of their dead ancestors and relatives come and join them.”[306.5] The Hillmen of Rájmahál on the death of a chief, hold a feast where a part of the provisions is dedicated to their god and to the spirit of the deceased, and thus becoming forbidden {307} to the survivors, is thrown away.[307.1] On Florida and San Cristoval, and possibly other of the Solomon Islands, at the funeral feast a bit of the food is thrown into the fire for the departed, with the words: “This is for you.” On Lepers’ Island and the Banks’ Islands, the feasts are repeated for a long period; and a portion is always set aside with the words: “This is for thee.” On the Banks’ Islands, indeed, at ordinary meals when the oven is opened a morsel of food is put aside for the dead with the words: “This is for you; let our oven be well cooked.”[307.2] The tribes about Lake Nyassa, in Central East Africa, hold a memorial feast two or three months after the death, of which the spirit of the deceased is considered to partake.[307.3] Among some of the Senegambian tribes, when the grave is filled up, a fowl, with its legs tied, is laid upon the mound, within reach of some water and boiled rice, which are placed at the head of the grave. If it eat any of the rice it is killed, the tomb is sprinkled with its blood, the flesh cooked and partly eaten, partly left for the dead. This ceremony is repeated at every renewal of the customary lamentations.[307.4] The Koiari tribe of New Guinea cook food at stated times, formally present it to the dead man, and then eat it.[307.5] The Dorah tribesmen on the same island hold a feast two or three months after the death of a first-born son, when the skull is produced, adorned with a wooden pair of ears and nose and with eyes of coloured {308} seeds. The head thus prepared is honoured with a portion of all the dishes.[308.1] So on the island of Nagir, in Torres Straits, at the death-dance held three months after the death of a man whose skull was afterwards sold to Professor Haddon, the skull being prepared and adorned was placed on a mat in the midst of the assembly. Food was provided for the immediate relatives, and laid before the skull. The feast then began; and it must have been accompanied by much enjoyment, for we are told that all got very drunk.[308.2] Perhaps this was the way in which the Issedones used the skulls of their dead. The same intention is doubtless to be understood of the memorial feast, or Karmantram ceremony, of the Eastern Kullens of Madura, in Southern India. After a meal, to which the relatives are invited, in the evening a bier, followed by the kin, is carried with music to the grave. The dead man’s wife’s brother digs up the corpse, and removes the skull, which he washes and smears with sandal-wood powder and spices. He then seats himself on the bier, holding the skull in his hand, and is carried without music to a shed in front of the house of the deceased, where the skull is set down, and the relatives weep and mourn over it until the following noon. The succeeding twenty-four hours are given over to drunken revelry. This, it will be observed, is in the presence or immediate neighbourhood of the skull. It is afterwards carried back by the person who brought it from the grave, seated again on the bier and accompanied by music. Arrived once more at the grave, the son or heir of the deceased, at whose expense the rite is performed, burns the skull and breaks an earthen pot. The relatives on {309} returning bathe and then feast together,[309.1]--an ordinary conclusion to a funeral ceremony. Here, if I am right in my interpretation, only drink is offered--by no means a solitary instance. The Livonians used to stand round a corpse drinking, inviting it to partake, and pouring for that purpose a part of the liquor over it. The pagan Lapps sprinkle the grave with brandy, part of which is reserved for the mourners at the funeral feast. However, they also kill the reindeer that draws the body to the burial-ground, eat the flesh and bury the bones, but in a separate coffin.[309.2] Among the Peguenches in the south of Chili, when the body is deposited in the graveyard, but before it is put into the ground, a feast is prepared. Every one who partakes, before eating throws a morsel of food towards the corpse, crying out “_Yuca-pai_.”[309.3] At the other extremity of the Western Continent the Eskimo sometimes pay a formal visit to the sepulchre taking pieces of deerskin and fat. Of the fat they eat a portion, standing round the grave, and talking the while to the dead. Then each of them lays a piece of deerskin (still covered with the fur) and a piece of fat under a stone, exclaiming: “Here is something to eat, and something to keep you warm.”[309.4] The feast with the dead is common among the North American tribes. It is eaten at the grave. A fire is kindled; and each person before eating cuts off a small piece of meat which he casts into the fire. The smoke and smell of this, they say, attracts the {310} ghost to come and eat with them. Nor only so. The practice of setting aside a portion of their food for the ghost whenever they eat or drink is continued, sometimes for years, until they have an opportunity of sending out this memorial with a war-party, to be thrown down on the field of battle, when their obligation to the departed ceases.[310.1]

Among the examples I have given, the skull of the dead man often appears at the festivity. Other representatives of the deceased are also found. The Tcheremiss _kart_, or shaman, wears the garments of the deceased; and when the feast is over it is he who gives what is left to the dogs.[310.2] The Teng-ger tribes of Java accord the most conspicuous position to a mannikin about a foot and a half high, made of leaves, dressed in the clothes of the dead and ornamented with flowers.[310.3] The practice of making images of the dead and conjuring the spirits into them is not an uncommon one; and wherever it exists we are justified in assuming that the images would not be allowed to go without their due share of nourishment at proper times.

The meaning of some ceremonies may not be quite so clear; as when one tribe of Tartars, having eaten the favourite horse of the departed, sticks up its head on the grave; or another tribe, killing and eating a fat mare, hangs her skin from the branches of the tree that shades the tomb.[310.4] The southern tribes of British Columbia often killed the horse of the deceased and decked the grave with its skin.[310.5] The Yoruba of West Africa collect the bones of the fowls and sheep eaten by the guests, and of the other {311} victims sacrificed, and place them over the grave.[311.1] The Kamtchadales eat a fish in memory of the departed and throw the fins into the fire.[311.2] The Kirghiz Tartars burn on the tomb the bones of the horse they have eaten--usually the favourite of the dead man.[311.3] Animal bones, burnt and unburnt, and especially the head of an ox, are frequently found in opening barrows in this country, pointing to practices on the part of the prehistoric inhabitants analogous to these.[311.4] Probably, in many cases at least, they are the remains of a banquet common to the living and the dead.

The drink bestowed on the dead in some of the foregoing instances perhaps represents blood; and blood, it will be remembered, was the share of the totem-god in the sacrificial feasts. Nothing could, therefore, more plainly bespeak the meaning of these funeral rites. In some cases, indeed, as we have seen, the blood is sprinkled upon the grave. So among the Wanyika the corpse when buried holds in its hand a piece of skin taken from the head of a goat or cow which has been killed for the feast, and the grave is sprinkled with the blood before it is filled up.[311.5] The dead body of a Yoruba is spattered with the blood of a he-goat slain to propitiate the phallic deity, Elegba; but whether the mourners partake of the flesh we are not told: most likely they do.[311.6] In the same way wine was sprinkled on a Roman’s grave--a ceremony of which we find the relic, after cremation began to be practised, in the formal extinction {312} of the ashes by the outpouring of wine. The rites of the Todas and Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills are complicated; and only a portion of them need be noticed in this connection. The corpse is burnt; but a piece of the scalp and some of the finger-nails are first cut off and preserved between two strips of bark as relics. On the anniversary, or some other suitable day, buffaloes are sacrificed; the relics are rubbed with their blood and ceremonially burnt; and their flesh is eaten by the Kotas.[312.1]

We may dismiss funeral banquets with one further observation. The intention of sharing a common meal with the dead is by no means abandoned at the completion of the funeral ceremonies. The feasts, as in several cases we have already noted, are repeated at intervals. Indeed, at all festivals when the entire kin is assembled the deceased members are conceived as assembled with them; a portion of the food is set aside, a portion of the drink is poured out for the departed. The cult of the dead in this form survives into the higher phases of civilisation. At various times in the year, particularly at Halloween, all over Europe, the tables are set, the doors are opened, and the ghosts are invited to partake of the fare provided by their descendants and relatives; and it is believed that they actually come and enjoy the food prepared for them, and warm themselves on the hearth, which, in the days of their flesh, they used to tend, and around which they used to gather, when work was over, to eat their frugal fare, and to rejoice one another with social converse and the performance of domestic rites. A tender custom! and one that pleads pathetically for its continuance as a witness to {313} a faith in comparison wherewith Christianity is a thing of yesterday, a faith not less true than Christianity itself in its recognition and its consecration of some of the deepest and most vital emotions of our nature.

There are other ways of forming a sacramental union with the dead. Among the Tolkotins of Oregon, who burnt their dead, the widow was compelled to pass her hands through the flame and collect some of the liquid fat exuding from the body, wherewith to daub herself. The Modocs appear to have smeared their persons with the blood of any of their kindred who died violent deaths.[313.1] On the Gilbert Islands “the nearest relations,” whatever that expression may include, are said to rub themselves with the saliva which escapes from the mouth in the agonies of death.[313.2] Other savages rub themselves with the liquid flowing from the putrefying corpse. There is no need to dwell on this loathsome custom. It is reported of tribes extending over a considerable area of the earth’s surface, namely, of the Krumen near Sierra Leone, the Antankàrana in Madagascar, the aborigines of Victoria, the Andrawillas in East Central Australia, the Koiari of New Guinea, the Laughlan Islanders between New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the inhabitants of New Britain and the Similkameens of British Columbia. Of the last we are told in so many words that they believe that in this way some portion of the deceased becomes incorporated in them.[313.3] Nay, some {314} peoples, like the Banks’ Islanders and the Aron Islanders imbibe these fluids; but the Nias Islanders perform the duty by deputy in the persons of their wretched slaves, who according to one account are suffocated in the process.[314.1] Of a party of Tasmanians who were deported to Barren Island we are told that they were seen to collect the ashes of the dead after burning, and smear a portion of them every morning on their faces, singing the while a death-song and weeping.[314.2] Among the Digger Indians of California the relatives are said to cover their hands and faces with a mixture of tar and the ashes of the deceased.[314.3] And the Correguajes Indians of New Granada burn the bones when the wild beasts have removed the flesh, and use the ashes as a pigment for painting themselves, “the relatives having the first right to its use.”[314.4] Earlier in the