Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/63

 on the Belief in a Future State. 53

these moist parts which by their complete disappearance leave the body safe in a sense, yet lifeless, so an effort often seems to be made to restore to the dead in some other form the vital element of which death robs them for ever — a rude endeavour, in fact, to reconstitute the organism. To shed the blood, " which is the life, upon the body of the dead," is perhaps the most direct attempt at securing this result. Many examples come from Australia,* where, indeed, blood is not only prized as a strengthening medicine for the living, but when dripped upon the corpse, forms a constant feature of burial rites. The Hebrews were forbidden to cut themselves for the dead,^ and a similar custom was known to the Peloponnesians, who scourged themselves annually at the grave of Pelops, letting their blood drip upon the ground. Perhaps we may inter- pret in the same manner the custom of anointing the dead ; also of liquid offerings to them, such as gifts of water, milk, oil, wine, or honey. That these are interchangeable seems clear from Mr. Ellis' account of libations in Dahomey, which may consist of blood, or alcohol, or water. How clear and natural seems the intention of the New Mexican mother who moistens her dead baby's lips with a few drops from her own breast, or of the African mother who drops a little of her milk into two pots for the twin babies who have been taken from her.^ Surely the spring of the action is a maternal longing to give once more to her children the life which lately they drew from her.^

^See Belief hi Iininortality, pp. 154-158, where it is suggested that the idea is to strengthen the soul for reincarnation. The belief in the latter, however, is not as widespread as this particular rile.

-Leviticus, xix. 28; Deuteronomy, xix. i.

•'Frazer, "On Certain Beliefs," J.A.I. 1885. See also De Quatrefages, The Pygmies, London, 1895, P- 'O?*

he says somewhat vaguely that these examples are "pathetic" ("On Certain Burial Customs," pp. 74-95). One wonders that the ghosts of these mothers do not return to plague those who have so misrepresented them.
 * Sir James Frazer says it is that they may not return to plague her, though