Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/162

154 one drank to the health of the deceased. This being finished six men took up the Corps, and carried it on their shoulders to the church."

The exhibition of cakes at the recent Folk-lore Congress included a Kólyva cake as made and used among the Greeks of Turkey. On the fortieth day after death a loaf is sent to each family of the friends of the deceased as a token of invitation to the commemorative service. The kólyva, a mixture of which the basis is boiled wheat, is blessed by the priests, and each person present takes a handful, saying, as he does so, "God rest him!" The ceremony is repeated the next day. The mourners then eat a meal together before proceeding to the cemetery with the priest to erect a tombstone over the grave. The poor of the neighbourhood, we are told, are in the evening regaled with a supper, during which their wishes for the soul of the departed are repeatedly expressed. This custom is recorded in Miss Garnett's book on the women of Turkey. More remarkable still is another custom which I do not find mentioned there, but of which she herself informed me. Cakes made of boiled wheat similar to the kólyva cakes, but without the elaborate ornamentation which covers them, are carried in the funeral procession—whether or not immediately behind the corpse Miss Garnett was not quite certain, though that is not, perhaps, very material. After the coffin has been put into the grave the cake is broken up and eaten by the mourners then and there above the tomb, each one of them pronouncing the words: "God rest him!" just as the Sin-eater pronounced the ease and rest of the soul departed, and just as at the nobleman's funeral at Shrewsbury the guests drank to the health of the deceased. The eating of the kólyva on the