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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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] 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 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 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 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]

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 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 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 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 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.