Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/342

 3 1 o Collectanea.

and bear them yourself." ^ Wine or ale was given with the " burying biscuits " in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Mulled ale and cold ale, both spiced, are described as given at a Welsh funeral, shortly before starting for the churchyard ; and they are said to have been given " amid the most profound silence, like the grave," and administered " just as the Lord's Supper is administered, and almost with the same reverence." - A foreigner, who witnessed a nobleman's obsequies at Shrewsbury in the early years of King Charles IL, states that the minister made a funeral oration in the chamber where the body lay, and " during the oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of wine, out of which every one drank to the health of the de- ceased. This being finished, six men took up the corps {sic) and carried it on their shoulders to the church." ^ It is I think impossible to sever the drinking of a ritual drink from the eating of a ritual food on the occasion of a funeral. They were both parts of one and the same observance, which in all cases took place just before the procession started for the churchvard. When the custom was in decay, sometimes the one, sometimes the other would survive.

Many years ago I discussed the meaning of the practice in the second volume of The Legend of Perseus in connection with similar rites in other parts of the world. The conclusion I then came to I still hold good — namely, that it is a relic of a very ancient custom, attributed by Strabo to (among others) the ancient Irish, of eating the flesh of dead kinsmen.

E. Sidney Hartland.

^ Addy, Household Talcs and Traditional Rcmaiits, 123, 124.

-Notes and Queries, 5th ser. v. 236; 7th ser. xi. 353. Brand and Ellis, Observations on Popular Antiquities, ii. 153 note, quoting the Gent. Mag. 1798. Atkinson, 227. Antiquary, xwi. 2,'-,i. Cynirn Fjt Azotes and Queries, ii. 271, quoting the author of I\hys Lewis.

^ Brand and Ellis, ii. 153 note, quoting Antiq. Repert.