Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/381

 FUNERAL MASKS IN EUROPE. BY THE HON. J. ABERCROMBY. Just two years ago, when I happened to be at Palermo, I was taken by Dr. Pitrè to see the new Ethnological Museum, of which I believe he was also the founder. Among the many interesting objects deposited there was a series of wax ex-voto figures such as one sees everywhere in Catholic countries. But what attracted my attention most was a small wax mask of a pretty rosy-cheeked child's face, with blonde hair and delicate features. Though it was hanging on the wall beside the ex-votos, its purpose and origin were quite different. Dr. Pitrè informed me it was a specimen of a mask sometimes used at Palermo at the funeral of a child. It is placed over the face of the child with the alleged reason that the feelings of the parents may not be shocked at the sight of the ghastly pallor and other changes that death produces on the human countenance. Yet in Sicily, except under very exceptional circumstances, the interment always takes place within twenty-four hours of the decease, an interval that does not permit "decay's effacing fingers" to injure materially the lineaments of the dead. We are inclined then to suppose that the alleged reason is not original but secondary, or at any rate is only one of two original explanations. This doubt is confirmed by the fact that as often as not the mask is not laid upon the face, but merely placed in the coffin by the side of the head. Though the custom is confined to Palermo and one or two towns, being unknown in country districts, it is either a revival or a survival of a very ancient practice. On Italian soil the use of sepulchral masks can be carried back as far as the fifth century B.C., and on European soil back to about the twelfth century B.C. We have seen that the alleged reason for placing a mask