There seems to be a special value in the sacred number "three," in the appeals through salt to the spiritual powers. In the Scottish Lowlands, "when a dead body has been washed and laid out, one of the oldest women present must light a candle, and wave it three times around the corpse. Then she must measure three handfuls of common salt into an earthenware plate, and lay it on the breast. Lastly she arranges three 'toom,' or empty dishes, on the hearth, as near as possible to the fire; and all the attendants going out of the room return into it backwards, repeat this 'rhyme of saining:'
"'Thrice the torchie, thrice the saltie,
Thrice the dishes toom for "loffie" (i. e., praise),
These three times three ye must wave round
The corpse, until it sleep sound.
Sleep sound and wake nane,
Till to heaven the soul's gane.
If ye want that soul to dee
Fetch the torch th' Elleree;
Gin ye want that soul to live,
Between the dishes place a sieve,
An it sail have a fair, fair shrive.'"[183]
In connection with the putting of a plate of salt on the breast of a dead body, there were various usages. A plate of bread was sometimes set with the salt, and again a plate of earth was its accompaniment. And different reasons were assigned for the presence of the salt there. Napier says that many persons claimed for it a value in preventing the swelling of the body in process of decomposition, "but its original purpose was to act as a charm against the devil, to prevent him from disturbing the body."[184]
"Pennant tells us that formerly, in Scotland, the corpse being stretched on a board and covered with a close linen wrapper, the friends laid on the breast of the deceased a wooden platter, containing a small quantity of salt and earth, separate and unmixed; the earth an emblem of the corruptible body, the salt as an emblem of the immortal spirit [the life]."[185]
Napier adds: "There was an older superstition which gave another explanation for the plate of salt on the breast. There were persons calling themselves 'sin-eaters,' who, when a person died, were sent for to come and eat the sins of the deceased. When they came, their modus operandi was to place a plate of salt and a plate of bread on the breast of the corpse, and repeat a series of incantations, after which they ate the contents of the plates, and so relieved the dead person of such sins as would have kept him hovering around his relations, haunting them with his imperfectly purified spirit, to their great annoyance, and without satisfaction to himself."[186] The basis of this plan of vicarious substitution of personality would seem to be, in the entering of the "sin-eaters" into oneness of life with the deceased through the salt covenant or the blood covenant, in partaking of his body and blood in the bread and salt from his breast.
Leland, in his "Etruscan-Roman Remains in Popular Tradition," says that there was, among the Tuscan Romans, an incantation, or an invocation, for every emergency. "If salt upset, they said, 'Dii avertite omen!'"[187] In Sicily, a goddess known as the Mother of the Day "is invoked when salt is spilt."[188] He also cites various incantations and exorcisms, in which salt is an essential factor.[189]
A custom prevails in some portions of Pennsylvania, even to this day, of carrying a bag of salt, with a Bible, over the threshold, on entering a new house for the first time. There are families who would not consent to live in a home which had not been thus consecrated.[190] This would seem to be a survival of the passing over the threshold with an offering of blood. A correspondence of this practice with ancient Etruscan customs seems to be indicated by the collections of Leland.[191] Among the Mordvins, a Finnish people on the Volga, salt on bread is placed under the threshold of the bride's paternal home at the time of a marriage covenant.[192] This may be classed with sacrifices or with divination according to our idea of the workings of the primitive Mordvin mind.