It is now time to review the custom, still common among uncivilized peoples, and once extremely popular in Britain, of placing objects with the corpse in the grave. A mass of evidence has been collated and examined, and though only a portion can be given here, we must, while shunning tediousness, present as much detail as is actually profitable. A rough preliminary classification of these funerary objects would include, (1) weapons and useful implements; (2) amulets, talismans, and symbolical objects; (3) trinkets, ornaments, and decorative articles; (4) a miscellaneous group, partly useful, partly symbolical or commemorative. It is necessary to premise that this classification is conventional, and lacks well-defined boundaries, hence, while dealing with one series of relics, other groups will be forced upon our attention, producing, later, unavoidable repetition.
That the groups enumerated have a somewhat arbitrary basis is rendered clear when we perceive a principle running through the whole series, most effective in prehistoric days, but probably reaching, in a vague and partial manner, to the utmost confines of modern religious thought. This principle, which must be briefly outlined, has been well described by Professor Tylor under the name of Animism. The term implies the doctrine of Spiritual Beings or Souls—a deep-lying belief in the two-fold nature of both animate and inanimate objects, as opposed to the teachings of Materialistic philosophy[685]. Animism supplies us, according to Professor Tylor, with “a minimum definition of Religion[686].” The primordial idea, which impelled early man to acts of worship, was, according to this theory, the belief that not only his own fellows, but the beasts, trees, and surrounding objects, natural or artificial, possessed spirits—ethereal images, as it were—of themselves. Hence the dead man must be provided with food, weapons, and other necessaries; not that these material objects themselves, but their corresponding phantasmal shapes, might, when disembodied, accompany the departed warrior or huntsman on his journey to the spirit-world[687]. In the earliest times, when the dead man was thought to be merely asleep, it may have been believed that the actual objects were of service, but at a later period, when it was recognized that the soul had actually left the body, the weapons were burnt, or perchance broken, before being interred. The precise mode of transmission of the simulacral forms to the dead man’s service was left in vague suspense, but the duty was clearly understood. The spirit of the weapon or ornament must be set free; the ghost desired the immaterial wraiths or shadows, not the solid earthly utensils. Mr Grant Allen has ingeniously, and with considerable force, contended that the two faiths may be correlated with the Long-Barrow Period and the Round-Barrow Period respectively. During the former age, when inhumation was in fashion, the life of the grave was considered to be as material and real as life on the earth, and the weapons would serve equally well for both worlds. Among the cremationists of the Bronze Age who imagined the existence of “a realm of incorporeal disembodied spirits,” the ghost was conceived to be immaterial, therefore the weapons were broken or charred with fire[688]. It must further be noted that Mr Grant Allen, along with some other writers, does not altogether accept Professor Tylor’s theory of animism. He does not believe that the ideas involved in animism are demonstrably primitive[689], and, following in the footsteps of Herbert Spencer, he seeks the origin of religion in ancestor-worship and its associated ancestral ghosts. According to this hypothesis, objects were first placed in, or on, the grave, to propitiate the dead. As fear of the corpse gradually diminished, respect became the dominant idea, and ghost-worship and shade-worship were established. Between this “Humanist” school of thought, and that of Animism, as represented by Professor Tylor and Professor Frazer, a reconciliation may, to some extent, be effected[690]. We may perhaps look upon ancestor-worship as a sub-division of the animistic belief, and as tending towards a higher plane of religion. Professor Frazer, in his work on Totemism and Exogamy, has cleared the ground by showing that totemism, which has often been regarded as a primitive religion, is only occasionally found in connection with the doctrine of external souls. In pure totemism, the totems are in no sense deities, to be propitiated by offerings or sacrifices. Professor Westermarck declares that there is no justification in facts for regarding the worship of the dead as “the root of every religion.” The spirits of the dead were not originally conceived as the only supernatural agents existing. Whichever be considered the primitive type of religion is a matter which will not greatly affect our present review of the facts of continuity. Nor need we feel much concerned with a third claim—that certain races may have reached the pastoral stage of society without passing through the nomadic stage, and may have been worshippers of the sun or some of the other external powers of Nature without embracing animism.
From the animistic side itself, Professor Tylor has uttered a significant warning against straining the theory. While in the vast number of cases, the idea of object-souls is, he informs us, both clear and explicit, yet it is notorious that there are peoples who sacrifice property or deposit offerings to the dead from other motives. Affection, fancy, or symbolism, a desire to abandon the dead man’s property, anxiety to appease the hovering ghost, may each, in particular cases, be an efficient motive[691]. Again, although the animistic conception, so far as primitive peoples were concerned, was world-wide in its extent, yet, in our day, and among civilized folk, the system seems to be drawing in its outposts. It has outlived the belief in the objective reality of apparitional souls or ghosts; the notion of the souls of beasts is similarly being left behind. The central position is now held by the doctrine of the human soul[692].
A still more modern theory, the psychological, is put forward by Mr A. E. Crawley, in his recent work, The Idea of the Soul. Mr Crawley considers that the world of spirits is a mental world, and that the soul itself is “the mental duplicate of reality.” As soon as man had the power of perception to enable him to form a memory-image, he possessed a soul. The mental replica of the object perceived was, in the earlier stages of savage life, concrete, though immaterial; at a later period, under the influence of language and science, abstractions were formed. One is bound to add that Mr Crawley’s theory does not seem to meet with general approbation, though it will have to be reckoned with in all future discussions.
We shall expect, from these preliminary observations, to encounter various gradations of belief as we proceed to consider the evidence for continuity of custom respecting burial gifts. In order that the forest may not lose its importance by being considered in detail, tree by tree, let us keep to our proposed classification, and glance first at the practice of burying weapons and other useful objects with the dead. Though the custom was not a marked feature of the Long-Barrow Period, the original inspiration dates from that age at least. The Round-Barrow epoch, however, was pre-eminently associated with the burial of weapons and utensils. A rough enumeration made by Canon Greenwell showed that about one-fifth of the barrows which he had opened contained implements of some kind, the commonest materials employed in the manufacture being stone, bronze, or horn. To be exact, out of 379 burials by inhumation or cremation, 77 had associated implements[693]. A study of the researches of Mortimer and Pitt-Rivers will give similar results. Nor when we trace the story onwards to the advent of Christianity, does the force of custom diminish, even if its direction becomes slightly changed. Flint scrapers and useful instruments of many kinds are turned out of graves belonging to the Roman period, just as Early Iron Age burials yield corresponding relics. A fragment of a flint celt was found with a Late Roman or Early Saxon burial at Leicester[694], while a Saxon grave at Ash, in Kent, yielded a polished celt, together with a Roman fibula[695]. The celt, in this instance, was evidently an heirloom from an earlier period, and had been regarded by its finder with superstitious reverence. One need scarcely recall the celebrated Saxon tumulus in Taplow churchyard, Buckinghamshire ([p. 81] supra), which contained, in addition to Anglo-Saxon relics of the ordinary kind, flint flakes, cores, and scrapers[696]. On the Continent, flint arrow-heads are frequently found with Merovingian remains dating from the fifth to the eighth centuries of our era. In one case, an iron sword of the Frankish period accompanied the arrow-heads. Such occurrences are not well-attested with respect to Britain, though the collocation of flint and bronze articles is frequent[697]. The most remarkable instance of the survival of celt-burial is that supplied by the tumulus in Flanders, described by Evans. Within this barrow, arranged in a circle around the body, the mourners had placed six celts in an upright position. The celts, seemingly of different ages, had been gathered from the surface of the soil, and deposited within the tomb as amulets[698]. There can be little doubt, however, that the custom, thus shorn of its primary significance, was once the expression of a deep conviction of service. An ancient Vedic hymn, or dirge, has the words, “Take not the bow from the hand of him who lies dead.” Does not also Ossian give instructions to Oscar on this very subject? “Remember, my son, to place this sword, this bow, the horn of my deer, within that dark and narrow home, whose mark is one grey stone[699].” When we observe that parallel ideas are actually common the world over, we shall be inclined to believe that Macpherson has here recovered a bit of genuine Celtic tradition. Thus, the Greenlanders inter bows and other weapons with the dead, the Turanians of Eastern Asia bury axes, flints, and food, and supply the deceased warrior with a spear that he may be ready for future combat[700].
There is no need to press this point, but having carried the custom to Saxon times, when objects of stone still survived along with such burial relics as iron swords, daggers, and knives, let us consider one or two later observances. In Mediaeval days, burial in armour was considered most honourable. Not seldom, the warriors lay uncoffined, their shroud a panoply of iron. Their arms and weapons, again, were suspended over the tomb. This practice lasted a long time, and allusion to it may be found in Shakespeare. Laertes, speaking of the burial of his father Polonius, complains of
“his obscure funeral,
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones[701].”
And Iden, in the second part of Henry VI., inquires,
“Is’t Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor?
Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed,
And hang thee o’er my tomb when I am dead[702].”
Every ecclesiologist is familiar with such arms and accoutrements as are here mentioned. Dr J. C. Cox has enumerated churches where personal armour is still preserved[703]. No further digression can be made here, but the reader may again be reminded that many armorial relics belong to a later period, and are counterfeits which constituted part of the undertaker’s trappings (cf. [p. 159] supra). One attenuated survival lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century in the form of square or lozenge-shaped hatchments (= “achievements”), made of wood. On these wooden shields, which, after the funeral, were nailed up in the church, were blazoned the coats-of-arms borne by the family of the deceased person. The most recent spectacle of this kind, surprisingly belated, was witnessed at the church of Hunmanby, in the East Riding, during the year 1897[704].