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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 chapter I mentioned a method of dealing with the dead body of a Koniaga whaler. An alternative method is to cut it into small pieces and distribute it among the other whalers, each of whom rubs the point of his lance upon it, so to unite the weapon with the skill and power inherent in the deceased, and preserves the morsel as a permanent talisman.[314.5] Sometimes a Tchuktchi, tired of life, is put to death by his kinsmen at his own desire. All who take part in the ceremony bathe their faces and hands in his blood. They then burn his body on a funeral pyre, standing around it and praying the departed not to forget them.[315.1] A Dyak rite identifies the victim at the commemorative festival with the deceased. The corpse is put into a temporary coffin for preliminary burial until the Tiwah, or Feast of the Dead, can be held. On that occasion a slave, or prisoner of war, is provided and dressed in the usual clothing of the deceased. Thus clad, the victim is wounded by all the assembled guests and finally killed. The priestesses in attendance then daub the relations of the deceased with the victim’s blood, “so to reconcile them with the departed and to give them to understand that they have now fulfilled their obligation towards his wandering soul.” After a night of debauchery the remains of the dead man and the victim are placed in one permanent coffin, in the family dead-house; but the victim’s skull is ranged with others outside.[315.2] The details of this ceremony are unmistakable, though it is right to say that the victim is now regarded simply as an attendant on the departed in the other world.