Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/275

 Reviews. 253

much for him and he hurries away (which seems a weak point in the story), so that the seeker is enabled to secure the treasure. Here in the iron and the cross we have a very interesting blend of pre-Christian and Christian beliefs and ideas.

Without citing other similar points we may direct special atten- tion to the discussions as to various methods of burial and the underlying ideas attached to each contained in the chapters "Scyld's Funeral Obsequies," "The Double Burial in Beowulf," and " Beowulf's Funeral Obsequies." Everybody knows that cremation during the later part of the Bronze Age replaced the earlier method of inhumation and was again itself displaced, and there has been mucli discussion as to the significance of this. One of the most recent works which deals with this question is that very magnificent contribution to science by the Hon. John Abercromby, Bronze Age Pottery. Mr. Abercromby agrees with those who think that cremation indicated the belief in a separate soul which, when the body was burnt, could depart from the scene of its funeral, whereas the soul belonging to the inhumated body was, as we may put it, earthbound, and compelled to linger near the place of its burial. With this view Stjerna concurs, and endeavours to explain the alternations of the two methods of disposal of the dead by a consideration of the racial influences from time to time dominant. On the question of the voyage of the dead, — so closely connected with many mythologies and, of course, with ship-burials of Skandinavia, — he thinks that we can distinguish three typical stages : —

1. The dead man is laid in a boat, and this is pushed out from the shore, it being left to the Higher Powers to settle what his fate shall be.

2. The dead man is buried in his ship on land, or both are hung up in a tree. Here we are further from the primitive idea, for it is left to the Higher Power not merely to determine where the boat shall go but actually to launch it from the land.

3. Finally, the Higher Power is expected to look after everything, for the dead is left without any means of transport. Stjerna thinks that this development had its cause in the growing spirituality of the times, but we may also surmise that, at least in many countries, it was the result of the waning of the belief that the souls of the