Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/555

 Co7n'espondeiice. 547

the " Sin-Eater", in the current journal, can be considered as the outcome of one belief, in various stages ?

I gather that he would treat as acts expressing a common idea the "sin-eating" of old English custom, where the whole gist of the usage, as celebrated by the " folk", lies in the cathartic significance, and where the celebrant has no kinship with the deceased ; the Bavarian usage, where the ritual cake is eaten by the kindred, that they may there- with receive the " virtues and advantages" of the dead kinsman, on or beside whose body the cake has lain ; the Scotch watchers' rite of placing their hands in the empty dishes and afterzvaj-ds eating ; and the breaking and eat- ing over the grave of the Turkish cakes.

The customs of which these seem to be typical examples are classed together as expressions of one belief; and this belief is explained as the survival of a primitive cannibal- ism induced by the widely-spread primitive idea that, by eating the flesh, the qualities of the man or creature may be received. How does Mr. Hartland prove that all the instances he gives, where the reception of the qualities of the dead is in no way mentioned, can be treated as resting on this special cause ; and not on that universal article of primitive creeds — perhaps one of the most necessary and sacred of all faiths to the savage mind — the renewal of the tribal kinship by the tribal sacrament of commensal eat- ing? Most of Mr. Hartland's instances seem to point to this as their cause, and to be examples of the universal custom of offering food to the disembodied tribesman, and of preserving the tie between the dead and living by eating together in the sacrament of the common meal.

I do not like to trespass on your space by giving the full evidence which would, I think, justify me in venturing to differ from Mr. Hartland. But the importance of any point touching on primitive sacraments, and of the kind of intercourse which the undeveloped reason conceives to be possible between tribal spirits (" ghosts of worship" often) and tribesmen still in the flesh, will, I think, excuse my