Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/95

Rh enclosed as well. The stiff funeral cards are a recent innovation, the old-fashioned "card" being printed on thin paper, with black lines round the memorial notice and accompanying verse or verses (if any). Sufficient arval bread was provided for every person "in the bidding" who was to be asked to the funeral, and for friends and relatives coming from a distance. Each farm had its own "bidding," i.e. representatives from each house within a certain area had to be "bidden" personally to come to the funeral as a matter of course. Neighbours outside the "bidding" were not asked as a rule unless they were relatives or close personal friends of the deceased. The boundaries of the "bidding" usually coincided with those of the township, I think. One arval cake was given either to each person present at the funeral, or more usually to the chief representative of each family, as they took their leave after the funeral feast; it was not eaten at the feast but taken home. They were sometimes sent to those houses in the "bidding" which could not send a representative to the funeral, though this would not be necessary in most cases, as no one missed a funeral to which he had been bidden except for very exceptional reasons. I imagine the arval bread was eaten the same night, but cannot remember any precise statement to this effect.

Before the funeral, cake and wine were served at the house, and after the funeral there was a feast at which baked meats and wine, amongst other things rich fruit cake, were nearly always provided in large quantities if they could be afforded. Amongst the poor, ale, cheese, oatcake, and wheat bread took their place. The ale or wine was sometimes spiced and sometimes both spiced and served hot. In Westmoreland port wine is regarded as a teetotal drink, and my mother once suggested that this was because it was always used at funerals, when everybody had to drink a glass whether they were teetotal or not. Even the poor had one bottle of port, of which everyone must taste.

The people of Troutbeck and Applethwaite were very particular about corpse-ways, and each farm had its own particular corpse-way established by ancient custom. They were occasionally sources of dispute when they ran across a neighbour's fields, and it is said that fences had sometimes to be removed