Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/395

Rh is left on the top of the grave and part is deposited in holes in the ground.

Before concluding, there is one point in Roman funeral custom that seems to have puzzled writers of an older generation, but which from a folklore point of view is not difficult to explain. It is that the archimime made jests at the expense of the deceased whom he actually represented, and that a band of actors following the procession served to attract and amuse the crowd. They recited passages from the tragic poets or acted comic scenes, one of them sometimes mimicking the peculiarities of the deceased. All this of course excited the mirth of the spectators; and that was the very object of it. At first sight such unseemly mirth seems in direct contradiction to the previous lamentations and other signs of woe. But remembering the awe in which ghosts were held some explanation must be found that removes the apparent contradiction. It seems to me that a dim belief was held that somehow or other, by a process they could not explain, the hilarity of the spectators would have a favourable reaction on the ghost of the deceased. It would impart cheeriness of mind to him, would enliven and cheer him up on his peregrination to the other world. Nor was this apparent levity of behaviour at funerals confined to the Romans. Herodotus (bk. v. § 4) relates that when a Thracian died they buried him with laughter and rejoicing, saying that now he was free from a host of sufferings and enjoyed complete happiness. Folk-lorists I venture to think will hardly accept the explanation of the Father of History. According to the Chinese geographer Kouan-iu-ki, the Tha-tche, afterwards known as the Hioung-nou, at funerals accompany the corpse with singing and dancing. At the funeral feasts, too, of the Votiaks they sing merry songs, and their frame of mind is far from