Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/374

 352 Ceremonial Ciistovis of the British Gipsies.

years, sometimes for life. I could quote a score of instances of abstention for this reason from such things as fish, hedgehogs, potatoes, apples, Christmas puddings, tobacco,, and beer.^--^ In addition to this, the German Gipsies fre- quently fast on Fridays for a year, and used at one time to turn vegetarians for a year,^'-^ but a similar taboo has never been mentioned in connection with the Gipsies of Eastern Europe. In England they also frequently abstain from the favourite amusement of the deceased, — music, dancing, or cards. One of the Burtons never uses the stopping-places vi'here his dead father used to encamp ; and an aunt of Louis Lovell, who saw him brought from Darton, where he died, to Bradford in a suit of red flannel, swore never to wear that coloured material again. ^'^ The taboo against mentioning the dead by name, with which I have already dealt, is the most widely-spread and strictly observed of all. It has been recorded by Liebich and Wlislocki for Germany, Servia, and Turkey, in addition to England. Finally, an oath by a dead relative, — e.g., "By my dear dead grandfather," — is the most sacred an English Gipsy can swear.

There can be no doubt that the destruction of the' property of the deceased, and of the waggon or tent and its contents, is the main feature of Gipsy funeral rites ; and it seems to me to be equally obvi ^us, after what has been said about the Gipsies' fear of ceremonial contamination from clothing, crockery, etc., that this destruction is not dictated by a desire to supply the needs of the spirit in another worlds but by dread, either of the contaminating power of death or of the clinging presence of the ghost of the dead person. That the animistic explanation is the correct one becomes

^^' A few examples will be found in Leland's The English Gipsies and their Language, pp. 49-55-

'^"'■^ Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. ii., p. 365.

^^^ Crofton, " Gypsy Life in Lancashire and Cheshire," in Manchester Literary Club Papers, vol. iii. (1877), p. 35.