Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/56

 46 The Infiueiice of Bicrial Custo7ns

well-known classic, derives Vesta and Agni from the ever-burning fire on the hearth, associating the latter also with the worship of ancestors. A stray hint from La Cite Antique is of extreme value to the present argument, when taken together with what we have learned since of the prehistoric hearth and its frequent accompaniment of human remains : " Le grammarien Servius, qui etait fort instruit des antiquites grecques et romaines (on les etudiait de son temps beaucoup plus qu'au temips de Ciceron), dit que c'etait un usage tres ancien d'ensevelir les morts dans la maison, et il ajoute : ' Par suite de cet usage, c'est aussi dans les maisons qu'on honore les Lares et les Penates.' Cet phrase etablit nettement une antique relation entre les cultes des morts et de la foyer. On pent done penser que le foyer domestique n'a etc a I'origin que le symbole du culte des morts que sous cette pierre du foyer domestique un ancetre reposait, que le feu y etait allume pour I'honorer, et que ce feu semblait entretenir la vie en lui ou representait son ame toujours vigilante." ^

Sometim^es fires are lighted on the grave or in the house to hasten the process of decomposition ; ^ or, as among the Narrinyeri, to dry the corpse.^ This fact, however, will be discussed later in its bearing on a point of singular interest.

After this brief survey of certain customs associated with burial, it may be possible to get still closer to origins if the actual methods of disposal of the dead body be considered. Of these the simplest form is plainly that of its abandonment. We are told of the East African that he simply throws his dead away in the jungle to be devoured by wild beasts ; "* while the Siberians and the Hottentot

^ Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite Antique, Paris, 1912, p. 30.

2 Van Gennep on "The Betsileo Observances,'' Les Rites de Passage, Paris, 191 2, p. 30.

^Rev. G. Taplin, "The Narrinyeri," in Native Tribes of S. Australia, Adelaide, 1879. See also Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vi. 135.
 * SirCh. Eliot, E. Africa Protectorate, p. 93, 1905.