Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/323



The paschal lamb is here cooked in two dishes. One (called ) is made of the body of the animal, with a stuffing made of its liver and lungs. It is eaten at the mid-day meal on Easter Sunday. The other is made of the head, feet, and entrails, and is eaten on Easter morning for breakfast. It is not permissible to give the bones of the to dogs, and they are thrown in the sea; the bones of the  may, however, be given to dogs. It is evident that we have here in part interesting survivals of a sacrificial ritual other than that prescribed by Hebrew law. At Cos in antiquity (see Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Cos, p. 86) the head, feet, and entrails, then called, were the first parts of the victim sacrificed. They were cooked on the temple hearth, and no parts of them might be carried out of the sacred precinct. The reason for this latter rule, so common as regards certain parts of the victim, in Greek sacrificial ordinances is, I conceive, that dogs or unprivileged human beings (slaves?) may not participate in that communion which eating them establishes between the god and his worshippers. It looks as if the modern usage here were in some measure a concession on the part of the old native rite to Hebrew usage. The are still eaten first; but the precautions taken against their being shared in by dogs are transferred to the body of the lamb. Of course this is only a hypothesis formed on the spur of the moment.

There was some correspondence last year in the Athenæum about "other people's superstitions." The special magic and therapeutic power of foreign gods is too abundantly evidenced to require any additional confirmation; but I have been interested