Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/852

834 from whom they claim descent. Men who have lost their wives signify their mourning by going bareheaded for six months.

To the Ruthenians, death is a greatly dreaded visitor, and calls out most demonstrative expressions of grief. They now put the pipe and tobacco-box of the deceased in the grave, as in ancient times they used to deposit his armor there. All the furniture is removed from the place before the dead man is taken from the house, so that the escaping soul shall not be held back by its attachment to the familiar arrangement of the room—a custom which in itself, and in the thought that suggests it, contrasts curiously with the Servian fashion. When the coffin is being borne out, it is set down upon the door-step, so that the walls of the house may know that one of its inmates has left it.

The custom of providing the deceased with an obolus, or a piece of money to pay the ferryman over the river of death, prevails among the Roumanians, who derive it from the Romans, and among the Slovaks of North Hungary, who never had anything to do with the Romans. Among the Slovaks, the coffin of a young girl is red, while her dress is black, that being to them the color of innocence, and a sprig of rosemary is put in the hand of the corpse. A lighted taper is set at the head of the casket.

Among barbarous and savage races, the diversities in funeral customs are endless, and often mark strange and paradoxical notions of life and death. They may still be witnessed in the islands of the sea and in the "Dark Continent," where civilization and foreign influences have hardly made a scratch, in all their pristine originality and freshness. A large book would not suffice to contain the descriptions of them all. We give here only a few of the hundreds of specimens we might present, culled from the most recent accounts of travelers and missionaries:

Herr F. Grabowsky relates, in an account of that people, that the Maanjans of Southeastern Borneo set great store upon dying in their own house, and on having their funeral celebrated in their native village. When the signal of death is sounded in solemn, rhythmic beats on the garangtong, the village is supposed to become partially unclean, and particular observances are imposed on the people. The soul of the deceased is imagined to wander about the place uneasily till the funeral services are performed, and the night to be its day. Hence, every person who has to leave the place for any reason makes it a point to do so before sunset; and, if he has to go out later, he avoids speaking to anybody, and every one shuns him. According to the superstitions of this people, the souls return from the spirit-world to the earth after seven generations; and, if a pregnant woman craves, for instance, sour fruits, it is said that a soul from the other world has returned to dwell in her, in order to be born to life again. As soon as the dying man has breathed his last, the mourning-women begin