Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/160

152 the Sin-eater. That this identification is substantially correct will be seen, not only from the instances already given, but also from Pennant's statement that in Wales, "previous to a funeral, it was customary, when the corpse was brought out of the house and laid upon the bier, for the next of kin, be it widow, mother, sister, or daughter (for it must be a female), to give, over the coffin, a quantity of white loaves, in a great dish, and sometimes a cheese, with a piece of money stuck in it, to certain poor persons. After that, they present, in the same manner, a cup of drink, and require the person to drink a little of it immediately. When that is done, all present kneel down, and the minister, if present, says the Lord's Prayer; after which they proceed with the corpse To this hour the bier is carried by the next of kin; a custom considered as the highest respect that filial piety can pay to the deceased."

It is not at all uncommon, as folk-lore students are aware, that tribal, communal, and other feasts in the last stage of their decadence come to be represented by gifts of food to the poor. The significance of the custom as related by Pennant is that the food and drink are given across the coffin, by the next of kin, and that if the recipients are not required to eat the bread on the spot, they have at least to drink of the liquor offered them. At funerals in Ireland a plate of snuff is placed upon the breast of the dead, or upon the coffin, and everyone who attends the funeral is expected to take a pinch. This custom seems to be hardly yet extinct, as I have lately spoken to eye-witnesses of it during quite recent years. In South Wales a plate of salt is still often laid on the breast of the corpse (a custom once common in a much wider area); and "in a parish near Chepstow it was usual to make the figure of a cross on the salt, and cutting an apple or an orange into quarters, to put one piece at each termination of the lines"; while in Pembrokeshire a lighted candle was stuck in the