“A soul-cake, a soul-cake,
Have mercy on all Christen soules for a soule-cake.”[160]
Indeed the custom of soul-cakes survived in Shropshire down to the latter part of the nineteenth century and may not be extinct even now. “With us, All Saints' Day is known as ‘Souling Day,’ and up to the present time in many places, poor children, and sometimes men, go out ‘souling’: which means that they go round to the houses of all the more well-to-do people within reach, reciting a ditty peculiar to the day, and looking for a dole of cakes, broken victuals, ale, apples, or money. The two latter are now the usual rewards, but there are few old North Salopians who cannot remember when ‘soul-cakes’ were made at all the farms and ‘bettermost’ houses in readiness for the day, and were given to all who came for them. We are told of [pg 079] liberal housewives who would provide as many as a clothes-basket full.”[161] The same custom of going out “a-souling” on All Saints' Day or All Souls' Day used to be observed in the neighbouring counties of Staffordshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Herefordshire, and Monmouthshire. In Herefordshire the soul-cakes were made of oatmeal, and he or she who received one of them was bound to say to the giver:
“God have your saul,
Beens and all.”[162]
Thus the practice of “souling” appears to have prevailed especially in the English counties which border on Wales. In many parts of Wales itself down to the first half of the nineteenth century poor peasants used to go about begging for bread on All Souls' Day. The bread bestowed on them was called bara ran or dole-bread. “This custom was a survival of the Middle Ages, when the poor begged bread for the souls of their departed relatives and friends.”[163] However, the custom was not confined to the west of England, for at Whitby in Yorkshire down to the early part of the nineteenth century it was usual to make “soul mass loaves” on or about All Souls' Day. They were small round loaves, sold by bakers at a farthing apiece, chiefly for presents to children. In former times people used to keep one or two of them for good luck.[164] In Aberdeenshire, also, “on All Souls' Day, baked cakes of a particular sort are given away to those who may chance to visit the house, where they are [pg 080] made. The cakes are called ‘dirge-loaf.’ ”[165] Even in the remote island of St. Kilda it was customary on All Saints' Day to bake a large cake in the form of a triangle, furrowed round; the cake must be all eaten that night.[166]
Feast of All Souls among the Indians of Ecuador.
The same mode of celebrating All Souls' Day has been transported by Catholicism to the New World and imparted to the aborigines of that continent. Thus in Carchi, a province of Ecuador, the Indians prepare foods of various sorts against All Souls' Day, and when the day has come they take some of the provisions to the church and there deposit them on tables set out for the purpose. These good things are the perquisite of the priest, who celebrates mass for the dead. After the service the Indians repair to the cemetery, where with burning candles and pots of holy water they prostrate themselves before the tombs of their relations, while the priest or the sacristan recites prayers for the souls of the departed. In the evening the Indians return to their houses. A table with four lights on it is spread with food and drink, especially with such things as the dead loved in their life. The door is left open all night, no doubt to let the spirits of the dead enter, and the family sits up, keeping the invisible guests company through the long hours of darkness. From seven o'clock and onwards troops of children traverse the village and its neighbourhood. They go from house to house ringing a bell and crying, “We are angels, we descend from the sky, we ask for bread.” The people go to their doors and beg the children to recite a Pater Noster or an Ave Maria for the dead whom they name. When the prayer has been duly said, they give the children a little of the food from the table. All night long this goes on, band succeeding band of children. At five o'clock in the morning the family consumes the remainder of the food of the souls.[167] Here the children going from door to door during the night of All Souls appear to personate the souls of the dead who are also abroad at that time; hence to give bread to the children is the same thing as to [pg 081] give bread to the poor hungry souls. Probably the same explanation applies to the giving of soul-cakes to children and the poor on All Souls' Day in Europe.
The nominally Christian feast of All Souls on Nov. 2 appears to be an old Celtic festival of the dead adopted by the Church in 998 a.d. Institution of the Feast of All Souls by the Abbot of Clugny.
A comparison of these European customs with the similar heathen rites can leave no room for doubt that the nominally Christian feast of All Souls is nothing but an old pagan festival of the dead which the Church, unable or unwilling to suppress, resolved from motives of policy to connive at. But whence did it borrow the practice of solemnizing the festival on that particular day, the second of November? In order to answer this question we should observe, first, that celebrations of this sort are often held at the beginning of a New Year,[168] and, second, that the peoples of North-Western Europe, the Celts and the Teutons, appear to have dated the beginning of their year from the beginning of winter, the Celts reckoning it from the first of November[169] and the Teutons from the first of October.[170] The difference of reckoning may be due to a difference of climate, the home of the Teutons in Central and Northern Europe being a region where winter sets in earlier than on the more temperate and humid coasts of the Atlantic, the home of the Celts. These considerations suggest that the festival of All Souls on the second of November originated with the Celts, and spread from them to the rest of the European peoples, who, while they preserved their old feasts of the dead practically unchanged, may have transferred them to the second of November. This conjecture is supported by what we know of the ecclesiastical institution, or rather recognition, of the festival. For [pg 082] that recognition was first accorded at the end of the tenth century in France, a Celtic country, from which the Church festival gradually spread over Europe. It was Odilo, abbot of the great Benedictine monastery of Clugny, who initiated the change in 998 a.d. by ordering that in all the monasteries over which he ruled, a solemn mass should be celebrated on the second of November for all the dead who sleep in Christ. The example thus set was followed by other religious houses, and the bishops, one after another, introduced the new celebration into their dioceses. Thus the festival of All Souls gradually established itself throughout Christendom, though in fact the Church has never formally sanctioned it by a general edict nor attached much weight to its observance. Indeed, when objections were raised to the festival at the Reformation, the ecclesiastical authorities seemed ready to abandon it.[171] These facts are explained very simply by the theory that an old Celtic commemoration of the dead lingered in France down to the end of the tenth century, and was then, as a measure of policy and a concession to ineradicable paganism, at last incorporated in the Catholic ritual. The consciousness of the heathen origin of the practice would naturally prevent the supreme authorities from insisting strongly on its observance. They appear rightly to have regarded it as an outpost which they could surrender to the forces of rationalism without endangering the citadel of the faith.