Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/373

 Ceremonial C us to jus oJ I he British Gipsies. 351

preserved that ought not to have been, then it is left severely alone ; no one will look at it, or touch it, or disturb it.

The favourite animals of the dead person, his horse and his dog, for instance, are occasionally slaughtered by English Gipsies, though this is somewhat unusual.^-" The carcasses are generally buried, occasionally sold, but, according to Adelaide Garratt {iicc Lee), they ought to be disposed of under water. The last method, however, is probably nothing more than a family idiosyncrasy, for it is obviously impossible in the majority of cases.

Annual ceremonial visits to the grave were at one time customary. Miller, the Doncaster historian, records that Gipsies from the south used to visit Charles Boswell's grave at Rossington annually, and pour a flagon of ale on it ; ^-^ and a former curate of Selston told the Rev. Geo. Hall that members of Dan Boswell's family used to visit his grave there and perform the same rite. The German Gipsies, in Liebich's time, used to pour the dead man's favourite alcoholic drink on his grave at the time of the funeral, and a year later hold a feast at the same place.^" The Eastern European coppersmiths dropped rum on Sophie Kirpatsh's coffin when it had been lowered into the grave, and drank some themselves, returning three days later to pour beer on the grave. On the ninth day a feast was held, and it was said that a like ceremony would be observed at the end of three, six, and twelve months.

The survivors frequently abstain from the favourite food or drink of a dead relative or friend, or food or drink shared with him just before his death, sometimes for a number of

>20See note 105; Catholic Times, Dec. 13, 1873; B. C. Smart and II. T. Crofton, The Dialect 0/ the Eiti^lish Gypsies (2nd ed., 1875), p. 203.

'-^ K. II. Groome, In Gipsy Tents, p. iii, quoting from Miller's Antiquities of Doncaster (Doncaster, 1804) ; N. <^ Q., 4th S., vol. iii., pp. 518, 557 ; Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. iii., p. 235.

"^ Liebich, op. cit., pp. 54.