Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/64

 54 Presidential Address.

so that a new wing to house the growing number of pilgrims is being added ; and every night about two hundredweight of water is sent off to various parts of the country, and even to America and the colonies.^

3. Orientation. "When Bishop Thorold was buried in Winchester Cathedral last week the coffin was placed in the grave with the feet to the west instead of to the east. A few hours after the funeral had taken place, and after all the company had dispersed, the coffin was lifted from the grave and placed in the usual eastward position which has been adopted with every Bishop of Winchester who is buried in the cathedral." 2

The writer's implication of a special custom in regard to those prelates shows that the barbaric origin of orientation is not familiar to him. But although it is bringing " owls to Athens " to enlarge on the matter in your presence, it may refresh some impaired memory to hear what Dr. Tylor says about the history of the rite in Christendom.

" It is not to late and isolated fancy, but to the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar ideas, that we trace the well-known tradition that the body of Christ was laid with the head towards the west, thus looking eastward, and the Christian usage of digging graves east and west, which prevailed through medieval times, and is not yet forgotten." ^

To this may be added an extract from a letter by Dr. Tylor, which appeared in the Times of 15 July, 1875 :

" English theologians argue about the Eastward Position without a hint of its being a pre-Christian rite as wide as the world and almost as old as the hills. In their controversies we find not a word of what can be learnt of its origin from Lucian and Vitruvius, from the Brahman standing on one leg to perform his devotions towards the East, or the medicine-man of the American prairie setting out the weapons in the East of the lodge to catch the earliest rays of the rising sun."

1 Daily News, 18 March, 1895.

2 Westminster Gazette, 9 August, 1895.

^ Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 383. Cf. Brand's Pop. Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 217 (Hazlitt's edition).