Replies to Minor Queries.
Mazer Wood and Sin-eaters (Vol. iii., pp. 239. 288.).
—The following extract from Hone's Year Book, p. 858., will add to the explanation furnished by S. S. S., and will also give an instance of the singular practices which prevailed among our ancestors:—
"Among the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum are statements in Aubrey's own handwriting to this purport. In the county of Hereford, was an old custom at funerals, to hire poor people, who were to take upon them the sins of the party deceased. One of them (he was a long, lean, ugly, lamentable, poor rascal), I remember, lived in a cottage on Rosse highway. The manner was, that when the corpse was brought out of the house, and laid on the bier, a loaf of bread was brought out, and delivered to the sin eater, over the corpse, as also a mazard bowl of maple, full of beer (which he was to drink up), and sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon him, ipso facto, all the sins of the defunct, and freed him or her from walking after they were dead."
Perhaps some of your readers may be able to throw some light on this curious practice of sin-eating, or on the existence of regular sin-eaters.
E. H. B.
Demerary.
[Mr. Ellis, in his edition of Brande's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 155. 4to. has given a curious passage from the Lansdowne MSS. concerning a sin-eater who lived in Herefordshire, which has been quoted in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xcii. pt. i. p. 222.]
"A Posie of other Men's Flowers" (Vol. iv., pp. 58. 125.).
—If D. Q. should succeed in finding this saying in Montaigne's Works, I hope he will be kind enough to send an "Eureka!" to "NOTES AND QUERIES," as by referring to pp. 278. 451. of your second volume he will see that I am interested in the question.