Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/68

58 breath of the dying Roman by his nearest kinsman has parallel in the breathing of the risen Jesus on his disciples that they might receive the Holy Ghost. In the offering of prayers for the dead; in the canonisation and intercession of saints; in the prayers and offerings at the shrines of the Virgin and saints, and at the graves of martyrs; there are the manifold forms of that great cult of the departed which is found throughout the world. To this may be linked the belief in angels, whether good or bad, or guardian, because the element common to the whole is animistic, the peopling of the heavens above, as well as the earth beneath, with an innumerable company of spiritual beings influencing the destinies of men. Well might Jews and Moslems reproach the Christians, as they did down to the eighth century, with having filled the world with more gods than they had overthrown in the Pagan temples; thus echoing a complaint which Petronius, who lived in the reign of Nero, puts into the mouth of Quartilla, that "the place is so densely peopled with gods that there is hardly room for the men," while we have Erasmus, in his Encomium Moriæ, when reciting the names and functions of saints, adding that "as many things as we wish, so many gods have we made." Closely related to this group of beliefs is the adoration of relics, the vitality of which has springs too deep in human nature to be wholly abolished, and whose inclusion within the province of folklore has warrant, whether we examine the fragments of saints or martyrs which lie beneath every Catholic altar, or the skull-bones of his ancestor which the savage carries about with him as a charm. Then there is the long list of church festivals, the reference of which to pagan prototypes is but one step towards their ultimate explanation in nature-worship; there are the processions which are the