Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/382

352 on the face of the dead is to prevent the feelings of the relations from being hurt unpleasantly, and no doubt the reason is natural and genuine. But there is another way of arriving at the same result without the use of a mask. It is possible by means of rouge and cosmetics to give to a corpse the appearance of life. From the following extract from the Scotsman newspaper it would appear that this gruesome custom is practised in the United States. "The American people have a passion for looking on the face of the dead. This is partly accounted for by the fact that undertaking is a fine art. By a process I am not able to explain the artist brings up the faded colour on the cheek of the dead till the loved one seems quietly reposing. There is none of the repulsive odour almost inseparable from a Scottish funeral. With head turned slightly to the side., with a smile on the lips, with the red flush on the cheek, the dead lie resting in their narrow bed." Rather more than 200 years ago a similar usage, though less elaborate in its details, was known in Sicily. In Catanese many used to paint the faces of women when laid out after death to render them more showy. But a diocesan synod in 1668 issued an edict against the practice on pain of excommunication. In France it was customary in ancient as well as in modern times for the body of a dead king to lie in state for eight or ten days. Before the embalmment a mould was taken of the face of the deceased, and from it was made a wax impression, which was coloured after nature, to place over the face of the prince. A curious collection of these masks used to be preserved at the Abbey of St. Denis, but it was lost during the Revolution. As the masks were accurate portraits, they were utilised by the sculptor charged to make the royal statue that was eventually placed over his tomb.