Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/316

288 obsession may obtain in the case of savage races, we look in vain for any trace of it in this "Life of Beket."

Of the positive results gained from the story, we will deal first with an old custom. Beket is coming back to Canterbury, and processions and other expressions of joy were organised to welcome him.

Noise, we may judge from this, was considered to be expressive of joy as well as serviceable for the driving away of eclipses.

Here we have a description of either ecclesiastical relic-hunting or of a practice of collecting the blood of those who died a violent death:

Of his burial, or rather of his right to be buried, we read as follows. The knights took counsel outside the town, after the murder:

Beket's curse: