Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

So pass thy white hand through.”

Here the hoop of steel has taken the place of the holed stone. The golden circlet has, however, become the usual substitute.

We will now consider some holes of a different description, that are not actual perforations. A custom very general in Roman Catholic countries must have struck travellers: it is that of placing cups, basins, or other concave vessels on graves. The purpose is that they may be filled with holy water—or if not with that, then with the dew of heaven. The friends, kindred, or charitable as they pass dip a little brush in the basin and sprinkle the grave with the water. This is a symbolic act, nothing more. It means that the visitor to the grave wishes well to the dead, and offers a prayer for the refreshment of the departed soul. That soul may be in purgatory, and he who sprinkles the grave knows that no drops of water thrown on the mound can slake the fire that tortures the soul, but he acts as though he thought that the soul still tenanted the body, and could be refreshed by the water thrown on his grave. I do not believe this usage to have received any formal sanction; it is a survival of a much earlier usage that has been given an altered signification. It is not a rational proceeding, but is not one particle more irrational than our putting wreaths and crosses of flowers on the graves of those we have loved. I remember a daughter planting ferns of many sorts round her mother’s tomb, “because mother was so very fond of ferns.” But those who thus act, when they consider, know well enough that what lies underground is the decaying husk, and that the soul, the true being, is elsewhere. Nevertheless, the mind, by force of custom and natural tendency, persists in associating soul with body after death, and the dead lady was given her ferns because they continued to give her pleasure, whilst lying in her grave, precisely as the Tartar chief is given his horse and his wives slain and laid about him in his cairn.

The original signification of the basin or cup on the tomb was that of a vessel to contain the drink supplied to the dead. The dead man continued to eat and drink in his cairn or dolmen, and the relatives supplied him with what he required.

In the British tumuli, hollows beside the dead are of common occurrence. Mr. Greenwell says: “It is of frequent occurrence to find holes, sunk below the natural surface, within the area of a barrow, and not usually in close proximity to any interment, though in some instances such has been found to be the case. Sometimes as many as four or five have been met with in a single barrow. They are of various sizes, and differ in shape, but they are generally circular, about 1½ feet in diameter, and the same in depth. In the greater number of cases they are filled with the ordinary materials of which the mound itself is composed, and contain nothing besides; but at other times pieces of animal, and much more rarely of human bones, charcoal, potsherds, and burnt earth, and stone are found in them.... It has suggested itself to me, that they may have been made as receptacles of food or of some other perishable material, and that they answered the same purpose as the vessels of pottery are supposed to have done, which are such frequent accompaniments of a burial. Their not being usually placed in close contact with the body is a fact not perhaps very consistent with this explanation of their purpose, but I am unable to offer any one more suggestion.”

I differ from Mr. Greenwell in one point only—that these basins being at a distance from the body may be inconsistent with the explanation he proposes. On the contrary, I conceive that these cup-like hollows were at the circumference of the original mound, and were often replenished with food or drink. As the mound spread through the action of rain, or as other interments were made in it, and it was enlarged, these basins became buried.

Fig. 53.—DOLMEN AT LARAMIERE (LOT), WITH CUP HOLLOW ON COVERER.

The parkin cakes baked in Yorkshire in November, the simnel or soul-mass cakes of Lancashire, the gauffres baked at All Souls-tide in Belgium, are all reminiscences of the food prepared and offered to the dead at All Souls, the great day of commemoration of the departed. Not only did the living eat the cakes, but they were given as well to the dead. In Belgium the idea still holds that the pancakes or gauffres avail the souls; but through a confusion of ideas, the ignorant suppose that the living by eating them satisfy the dead, and as these pancakes are very indigestible, it is customary to hire robust men to gorge themselves on gauffres so as to content the departed ones with a good meal. A has a dear deceased relative B. In order that B may be well supplied with pancake, A ought to eat a plentiful supply; but A shrinks from an attack of indigestion, which a surfeit would bring on, so he hires C to glut himself on gauffres in his room.