[570]. Spencer, Sociology, I. § 142, quotes Bancroft, of the Indians of the West, that for a long time after a death, relatives repair daily at sunrise and sunset to the vicinity of the grave, to sing songs of mourning and praise. Hahn tells the same thing of his Albanians, Alb. Stud., I. 151 f.
[571]. Radloff, III. 22.
[572]. Often quoted from Kranz, Grönländische Reise. See also Boas, “The Central Eskimo,” in Report Bur. Ethn., 1884-1885, Washington, 1888, p. 614.
[573]. Quoted Spencer, Soc., III. § 126.
[574]. There was also a lament sung hard upon the death of a warrior in battle. As the Goths bore away their dead king, singing a song of woe in the midst of flying weapons, so with many savages. In a skirmish which followed the murder of Captain Cook, a young islander was killed, and the Englishmen next morning saw “some men carrying him off on their shoulders, and could hear them singing, as they marched, a mournful song.” Cook’s Last Voyage, in Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, XI. 723.
[575]. On neniae as incantations, see Grimm, Mythologie,⁴ p. 1027.
[576]. The phrase for a capable person in incantation is found for Germanic usage in the Merseburg Charm, here said of Wodan himself,—sô hê unola conda; in Anglo-Saxon the same phrase is used for a skilled poet: se þe cuðe, Béow., 90; and in Old Saxon for a wise man: én gifrôdðt man the sô filo konsta wisaro wordo, Hêliand, 208.
[577]. For example, in mere invocation, the Erce, Erce, Erce, eorðan modor of an Anglo-Saxon charm (Grein-Wülker, I. 314), and the actual spell against stitch in the side (ibid., p. 318):—
Wert thou shot in the fell, or wert shot in the flesh,
Or wert shot in the blood [or wert shot in the bone],