Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/470

 440 Notes from Armenia,

Sin-eating.

Probably there are few questions which have been more hotly debated by folklorists of late years than those which relate to the eating of the sins of a dead person by means of funeral victuals placed on his coffin or in contact with his corpse. The matter is discussed in Sidney Hartland's Legend of Perseus, ii., 293 sqq., and he sums up his inquiry as follows : " Thus in our own country we find the relics of a funeral feast, where food is placed upon the coffin, or rather upon the body itself, or handed across it, and where it is expressly believed that by the act of eating some properties of the dead are taken over by the eater." Some doubt has been thrown on part of the Welsh evidence which Hartland brings forward (see Golden Bough, iii., 18, note 3) ; and the case requires further investigation and the confirmation of parallels from other parts of the world.

My contribution to the subject is slight, but not un- interesting; I do not, however, wish to be understood to express a complete belief in the validity of Mr. Hartland's arguments, though they are powerfully reinforced by Frazer {Golden Bough, iii., 19). Some further confirmations would be welcome. I have alluded above to a visit which I paid to the Armenian village of Archag. Archag is one of those places that were most fearfully devastated in the massacres of 1896- 1897, when for months the only living occupants of the village were the vultures and the dogs and wolves. On the occasion of my visit, I enjoyed with Dr. Reynolds of the American Mission at Van the privilege of Protestant preaching in the old Armenian Church (the preacher being the doctor and not myself). At the evening service, to my great surprise, I found that when the con- gregation dispersed, a corpse laid out for burial was lying in the midst of the building. It had, in fact, been brought in before we came, and was to lie in the church in prepara- tion for burial next day. I noticed that two large flat