Replies.
CARLING SUNDAY—ROMAN FUNERAL PILE.
(Vol. iii., p. 449.; Vol. iv., p. 381.; Vol. v., p. 67.)
At Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and many other places in the North of England, grey peas, after having been steeped a night in water, are fried with butter, given away, and eaten at a kind of entertainment on the Sunday preceding Palm Sunday, which
was formerly called Care or Carle Sunday, as may be yet seen in some of our old almanacks. They are called carlings, probably, as we call the presents at fairs, fairings. Marshal, in his Observations on the Saxon Gospels, tells us that "the Friday on which Christ was crucified is called in German both Gute Freytag and Carr Freytag;" that the word karr signifies a satisfaction for a fine or penalty; and that Care or Carr Sunday was not unknown to the English in his time, at least to such as lived among old people in the country.
In the old Roman calendar I find it observed on this day (the 12th of March), that a dole is made of soft beans. I can hardly entertain a doubt but that our custom is derived from hence. It was usual among the Romanists to give away beans in the doles at funerals; it was also a rite in the funeral ceremonies of heathen Rome. There is a great deal of learning in Erasmus's Adages concerning the religious use of beans, which were thought to belong to the dead. An observation which he gives us of Pliny concerning Pythagoras's interdiction of the pulse, is highly remarkable. It is "that beans contain the souls of the dead." For which cause also they were used in the Parentalia. Plutarch also, he tells us, held that pulse to be of the highest efficacy for invoking the manes. Ridiculous and absurd as these superstitions may appear, it is yet certain that our carlings deduce their origin from thence. On the interdiction of this pulse by Pythagoras, the following occurs in Spencer De Leg. Hebr., lib. i. p. 1154.:—
"Quid enim Pythagoras, ejusque præceptores, Ægypti Mystæ, adeo leguminum, fabarum imprimis, esum et aspectum fugerent; nisi quod cibi mortuorum cœnis et exequiis proprii, adeoque polluti et abominandi haberentur," &c.—Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities, Ellis's ed., vol. i. pp. 95-99.
In the notes in loco is mentioned "a practice of the Greek church, not yet out of use, to set boyled corne before the singers at their commemorations of the dead," v. Gregorii Opusc., p. 128. The length of this reply will not admit of my here enumerating the other emblems of the resurrection of the body used by the fathers and other writers. I shall therefore conclude with an extract from Rennel's Geographical System of Herodotus, p. 632., relating to the Pythagorean prohibition of beans:—
"The Bengalese have the Nymphæa nelumbo in their lakes and inundations; and its fruit certainly resembles at all points that of the second species of water-lily described by Herodotus; that is, it has the form of the orbicular wasp's nest; and contains kernels of the size and shape of a small bean. Amongst the Bramins this plant is held sacred; but the kernels, which are of a better flavour than almonds, are almost universally eaten by the Hindoos.
"It may, however, be a question whether it has always been the case; and whether in the lapse of time that has taken place since the days of Pythagoras (who is supposed to have visited India, as well as Chaldæa, Persia, and Egypt), a relaxation in discipline may not have occasioned the law to be dispensed with; instances enough of a like kind being to be met with elsewhere. Kyamos in the Greek language appears to signify, not only a bean, but also the fruit or bean of the Nymphæa nelumbo. Is it not probable then that the mystery of the famous inhibition of Pythagoras, an enigma of which neither the ancients nor the moderns have hitherto been able to give a rational solution, may be discovered in those curious records of Sanscrit erudition, which the meritorious labours of some of our countrymen in India are gradually bringing to light?"
Bibliothecar. Chetham.