Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/409

Rh and, when he arrived at Hvam, he heard for certain that his father was dead, and sat in the seat of honour. But all the people were frightened, for his death seemed so uncanny. Arnkel then entered the room, walking along behind the benches towards Thorolf and warning all present not to approach from the front until the usual rites had been performed. Then Arnkel seized Thorolf by the shoulders, and had to exert all his strength before he got him down from the seat, whereupon he wrapped a cloth round the dead man's head, and then laid out the body according to custom. After which he caused a hole to be broken out in the wall behind, through which the corpse was carried out, placed on a sledge drawn by oxen, and carried off to Thorsadal. Although it is not especially mentioned, one may be very certain that the hole in the wall was closed again.

Then comes a Danish saga from the present time about Hr. Ole, a parson, who was versed in magic arts, and who could at one and the same time be seen standing in the pulpit in Avnslev church and also fishing in the pond by the parsonage. Well, he died, the parsonage got burnt down, and with it his magic books. The corpse was carried into a neighbour's house, and there he suddenly sat up and exclaimed, "Ho, ho!" which was his favourite expression. When Hr. Ole was to be buried a hole was broken in the wall, and he was carried out that way.

Let us now continue with a judicial custom from the Middle Ages. With regard to a heretic it was ordered at Regensburg, in the thirteenth century, that he must not be buried in consecrated ground. No baptised person's hand may touch his corpse. You shall take a rope, fasten it by a hook to his foot, and then drag him out of the door. If the threshold is too high, a hole must be dug under the doorstep and he be dragged out that way,