Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/128

Rh upright. But for the dead, they reared palaces. These were not abodes for the invisible soul, but for the bodies. And for the bodies food was supplied. Most of these structures have either a moveable slab as door, or else one perforated, through which meals for the deceased might be passed.

On the Causse above Terrasson, in Dordogne, is a dolmen with a cuplike hollow in the capstone. A friend of mine living near learned that the peasants were wont to place either money or meal or grapes in it. So one night he concealed himself within the cist. Presently a peasantess came and deposited a sou in the cavity, when my friend roared out in patois: ‘Ce n’est pas assez. Donnez moi encore!’ whereupon the woman emptied her purse into the receptacle and fled.

In North Devon, at Washfield, the squire, a Mr. Worth, was a sportsman. When he died, in the eighteenth century, he gave orders that his hounds should be slaughtered and buried with him. The dogs were indeed killed, but interred outside the churchyard wall. At the funeral of a cavalry officer or a general, his horse is led in the procession, and is slightly wounded in the frog of one hoof, so as to oblige it to limp. Originally