Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/244

 232 Journal of American Folk-Lore,

cause, this water was administered as a cure. When not drawn at the time above mentioned, it was taken "in the silence of the night," that is, about midnight. Usually one person fetched the water ; if two went, they must not speak to each other or to any person they met. Not a word must be uttered, until the draught was administered to the ailing animal. Some- times the rule was more complicated ; in the case of a cure for fever, the stream sought must form the boundary between two lairds' lands, and the water must be drawn in a wooden basin of a peculiar shape. On the jour- ney back, the operator must turn with the sun at three spots, three times at each spot. On reaching the door of the house where the patient was, the operator must wait until the disk of the sun appears above the horizon, when the water was blessed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In another case, three stones are lifted from the bed of the stream, held in the hands and in the mouth, and the patient lies silent all night.

Prof. K. Krohn offers an interesting account of the worship of the dead in Finland. Formerly, when a new place of abode was chosen, it was necessary to select a place for " Karsikko," that is to say, a grove of trees; when a person died, a tree was lopped, and sacrifices were then offered to the dead ; when a bullock was killed, the first cooked dish was carried to the grove. In spring, the first fish must be offered ; and in autumn the first corn. If money were received, a coin must, first of all, be taken to the place of sacrifice. Later on, the grove was reduced to a single tree, and finally to a mere memorial without any religious significa- tion. The oldest form must have existed at the time when the Savolax people emigrated from Vermland to Delaware. In 1653, two Delaware- Finns, a man and a woman, were sentenced for sorcery. In the eighteenth century, these first Finns in America accepted, first the Dutch, afterwards the English language, and are now entirely blent with the rest of the popu- lation.

From a paper of V. V. Vucasovic, on funeral customs of the Southern Slavs, it would appear that the colossal monuments erected over the dead, chiefly from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, constitute imitations, as respects form, of Roman sarcophagi, but often placed on prehistoric tumuli. On the sides is sculptured especially the funeral dance, which they danced backwards ; the dancers are composed of men and women, in odd numbers. Episodes of the life of the deceased are also represented. The defunct is accustomed to hold the cross in his right hand, and is sur- mounted by a demi-lune and star, emblems of fortune (The Bosnian coat of arms). In his left hand he has a sword, and defends himself against a monster which seeks to devour him. Modern funeral customs are de- scribed.

F. F. Feilberg, in a paper called " Buried Alive," notices the custom of making, in the gable wall of farmhouses in Jutland, a low arch filled out with bricks, called the " corpse-door," it being the practice to carry out the coffin through the orifice, and wall up the opening before the return of the funeral procession, to the end, no doubt, that the dead might not be able

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