We ever loved and cherished you; and have lived long together Desert it not now! The rainy nights, and the cold blowing days, are coming on; Do not wander here! Do not stand by the burnt ashes; come to us again! You cannot find shelter under the peepul, when the rain comes down. The saul will not shield you from the cold bitter wind. Come to your home! It is swept for you, and clean; and we are there who loved you ever; And there is rice put for you; and water; Come home, come home, come to us again!' Among the Kol tribes this kindly hospitality to ancestral souls passes on into the belief and ceremony of full manesworship: votive offerings are made to the 'old folks' when their descendants go on a journey, and when there is sickness in the family it is generally they who are first propitiated.1 Among Turanian races, the Chuwash put food and napkins on the grave, saying, 'Rise at night and eat your fill, and there ye have napkins to wipe your mouths!' while the Cheremiss simply said, 'That is for you, ye dead, there ye have food and drink!' In this Tatar region we hear of offerings continued year after year, and even of messengers sent back by a horde to carry offerings to the tombs of their forefathers in the old land whence they had emigrated.2 Details of this ancient rite are to be traced from the level of these rude races far upward in civilization. South-East Asia is full of it, and the Chinese may stand as its representative. He keeps his coffined parent for years, serving him with meals as if alive. He summons ancestral souls with prayer and beat of drum to feed on the meat and drink set out on special days when they are thought to return home. He even gives entertainments for the benefit of 1 Tickell in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' vol. ix. p. 795; Dalton, ibid. 1866, part ii. p. 153, &c.; and in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 1, &c.; Latham, 'Descr. Eth.' vol. ii. p. 415, &c. 2 Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 62; Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 121. destitute and unfortunate souls in the lower regions, such as those of lepers and beggars. Lanterns are lighted to show them the way, a feast is spread for them, and with characteristic fancy, some victuals are left over for any blind or feeble spirits who may be late, and a pail of gruel is provided for headless souls, with spoons for them to put it down their throats with. Such proceedings culminate in the so-called Universal Rescue, now and then celebrated, when a little house is built for the expected visitors, with separate accommodation and bath-rooms for male and female ghosts.1 The ancient Egyptian would set out his provision of cakes and trussed ducks on reed scaffolds in the tomb, or would even keep the mummy in the house to be present as a guest at the feast, σύνδειπνον καὶ συμπότην ἐποιήσατο, as Lucian says.2 The Hindu, as of old, offers to the dead the funeral cakes, places before the door the earthen vessels of water for him to bathe in, of milk for him to drink, and celebrates at new and full moon the solemn presentation of rice-cakes made with ghee, with its attendant ceremonies so important for the soul's release from its twelvemonth's sojourn with Yama in Hades, and its transition to the Heaven of the Pitaras, the Fathers. In the classic world such rites were represented by funeral feasts and oblations of food. In Christian times there manifests itself that interesting kind of survival which, keeping up the old ceremony in form, has adapted its motive to new thoughts and feelings. The classic funeral oblations became Christian, the silicernium was succeeded by the feast held at the martyr's tomb. Faustus inveighs against the Christians for carrying on the ancient rites: Their sacrifices indeed ye have turned into love-feasts, their idols into martyrs whom with like vows ye 1 Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 173, &c.; vol. ii. p. 91, &c.; Meiners, vol. i. p. 306. 2 Wilkinson, Ancient Eg.' vol. ii. p. 362; Lucian. De Luctu, 21. 3 Manu, iii.; Colebrooke, Essays,' vol. i. p. 161, &c.; Pictet, 'Origines Indo-Europ.' part ii. p. 600; Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 332. 4 Pauly, 'Real-Encyclop.' s.v. ‘funus'; Smith's‘Dic.' s. v. ‘funus.' See Meiners, vol. i. pp. 305-19. worship; ye appease the shades of the dead with wine and meals, ye celebrate the Gentiles' solemn days with them, such as calends and solstices,-of their life certainly ye have changed nought,'1 and so forth. The story of Monica shows how the custom of laying food on the tomb for the manes passed into the ceremony, like to it in form, of setting food and drink to be sanctified by the sepulchre of a Christian saint. Saint-Foix, who wrote in the time of Louis XIV., has left us an account of the ceremonial after the death of a King of France, during the forty days before the funeral when his wax effigy lay in state. They continued to serve him at meal-times as though still alive, the officers laid the table, and brought the dishes, the maître d'hôtel handed the napkin to the highest lord present to be presented to the king, a prelate blessed the table, the basins of water were handed to the royal arm-chair, the cup was served in its due course, and grace was said in the accustomed manner, save that there was added to it the De Profundis.2 Spaniards still offer bread and wine on the tombs of those they love, on the anniversary of their decease. The conservative Eastern Church still holds to ancient rite. The funeral feast is served in Russia, with its tables for the beggars, laden with fish pasties and bowls of shchi and jugs of kvas, its more delicate dinner for friends and priests, its incense and chants of 'everlasting remembrance'; and even the repetition of the festival on the ninth, and twentieth, and fortieth day are not forgotten. The offerings of saucers of kutiya or kolyvo are still made in the church; this used to be of parboiled wheat and was deposited over the body, it is now made of boiled rice and raisins, sweetened with honey. In their usual mystic fashion, the Orthodox Christians now explain away into symbolism this remnant of primitive offering to the dead: the honey is heavenly sweetness, the 3 1 Augustin. contra Faustum, xx. 4; De Civ. Dei, viii. 27; conf. vi. 2. See Beausobre, vol. ii. pp. 633, 685; Bingham, xx. c. 7. 2 Saint-Foix, Essais Historiques sur Paris,' in 'Œuvres,' vol. iv. p. 147, &c. 3 Lady Herbert, 'Impressions of Spain,' p. 8. shrivelled raisins will be full beauteous grapes, the grain typifies the resurrection, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.'1 In the calendar of many a people, differing widely as they may in race and civilization, there are to be found special yearly festivals of the dead. Their rites are much the same as those performed on other days for individuals; their season differs in different districts, but seems to have particular associations with harvest-time and the fall of the year, and with the year's end as reckoned at midwinter or in early spring. The Karens make their annual offerings to the dead in the month of shades,' that is, December; 3 the Kocch of North Bengal every year at harvest-home offer fruits and a fowl to deceased parents; the Barea of East Africa celebrate in November the feast of Thiyot, at once a feast of general peace and merry-making, of thanksgiving for the harvest, and of memorial for the deceased, for each of whom a little pot-full of beer is set out two days, to be drunk at last by the survivors; in West Africa we hear of the feast of the dead at the time of yam-harvest; 6 at the end of the year the Haitian negroes take food to the graves for the shades to eat, manger zombi,' as they say." The Roman Feralia and Lemuralia were held in February 1 H. C. Romanoff, 'Rites and Customs of Greco-Russian Church,' p. 249; Ralston, 'Songs of the Russian People,' pp. 135, 320; St. Clair and Brophy, Bulgaria,' p. 77; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. i. p. 115. 2 Beside the accounts of annual festivals of the dead cited here, see the following:-Santos, 'Ethiopia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 685 (Sept.); Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. pp. 23, 522, 528 (Aug., Oct., Nov.); Rivero and Tschudi, 'Peru,' p. 134 (Peruvian feast dated as Nov. 2 in coincidence with All Souls', but this reckoning is vitiated by confusion of seasons of N. and S. hemisphere, see J. G. Müller, p. 389; moreover, the Peruvian feast may have been originally held at a different date, and transferred, as happened elsewhere, to the Spanish All Souls'); Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. ii. pp. 44, 62 (esp. Apr.); Caron, Japan,' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 629 (Aug.). 7 G. D'Alaux in 'Rev. des Deux Mondes,' May 15, 1852, p. 76. 2 and May. In the last five or ten days of their year the Zoroastrians hold their feasts for departed relatives, when souls come back to the world to visit the living, and receive from them offerings of food and clothing. The custom of setting empty seats at the St. John's Eve feast, for the departed souls of kinsfolk, is said to have lasted on in Europe to the seventeenth century. Spring is the season of the time-honoured Slavonic rite of laying food on the graves of the dead. The Bulgarians hold a feast in the cemetery on Palm Sunday, and, after much eating and drinking, leave the remains upon the graves of their friends, who, they are persuaded, will eat them during the night. In Russia such scenes may still be watched on the two appointed days called Parents' Days. The higher classes have let the rite sink to prayer at the graves of lost relatives, and giving alms to the beggars who flock to the cemeteries. But the people still howl' for the dead, and set out on their graves a handkerchief for a tablecloth, with gingerbread, eggs, curd-tarts, and even vodka, on it; when the weeping is over, they eat up the food, especially commemorating the dead in Russian manner by partaking of his favourite dainty, and if he were fond of a glass, the vodka is sipped with the ejaculation, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven be his! He loved a drink, the deceased!' When Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, at the end of the tenth century, instituted the celebration of All Souls' Day (November 2),4 1 Ovid. Fast. ii. 533; v. 420. 2 Spiegel, Avesta,' vol. ii. p. ci. ; Alger, p. 137. 3 3 Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' pp. 374, 408; St. Clair and Brophy, ‘Bulgaria,' p. 77; Romanoff, Greco-Roman Church,' p. 255. 4 Petrus Damianus, 'Vita S. Odilonis,' in the Bollandist 'Acta Sanctorum,' Jan. 1, has the quaint legend attached to the new ordinance. An island hermit dwelt near a volcano, where souls of the wicked were tormented in the flames. The holy man heard the officiating demons lament that their daily task of new torture was interfered with by the prayers and alms of devout persons leagued against them to save souls, and especially they complained of the Monks of Cluny. Thereupon the hermit sent a message to Abbot Odilo, who carried out the work to the efficacy of which he had received such perfect spiritual testimony, by decreeing that November 2, the day after All Saints', should be set apart for services for the departed. |