Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/374

 120 Collectanea.

Burial Customs.

When the corpse was washed and clothed, it was borne into another house and laid on straw, with a wisp of straw under the head and a psalm-book on the breast. This was called at ligge paa Ligstraa ("lying on the corpse-straw ").

When the funeral procession went forth, the straw was burnt ^ in an open field in the direction in which the procession went. When the relations and friends had assembled, the coffin was borne into the Sorgestue ("sorrowing room"); a cloth with a white cross on it was laid over it, whilst a psalm-book and two lighted candles were placed upon it. After a psalm had been sung, one who had been chosen to do so stepped forward and delivered a funeral oration, after which a relation went up and embraced the coffin and said, " Farewell, and thanks from me." The nearest relation then answered, " Farewell, and thanks shalt thou have."

Superstitions and Superstitious Practices.

1. If a child were ill, and all remedies failed, someone who took part in the Holy Communion had to take the Consecrated Bread out of his mouth quickly and secretly, and give it to the child on his return.

2. If the child suffered from an unusual illness, earth had to be taken from the churchyard and given to the child, but those who did so had to be sure to bury some silver coins in the place.

3. A piece of bread was laid in a new-born baby's cradle, and a piece of steel was bound in its swaddling clothes. When the child or its clothing was washed, a live coal was cast into the water before it was thrown away.

4. If the baby were deformed, or weak-minded, it was called a Bytting (changeling), by which it was meant that the underground folk had taken the parents' child and put theirs in its place.

5. Once a Finn woman, who was about to give birth to a child, was staying at a farm in the upper valley. So as to avoid pain,

^Cf. Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, p. 218, quoting "Hylten- Cavallius's book on the ethnology of a certain district in the south of Sweden,'"' which mentions "the custom of consuming with fire the mattress on which a man has breathed his last."