Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/689

Rh house?" The curious custom to which Plutarch here refers prevails in modern Persia, for we read in "Hajji Baba" (c. 18) of the man who went through "the ceremony of making his entrance over the roof, instead of through the door; for such is the custom, when a man who has been thought dead returns home alive." From a passage in Agathias (ii, 23) we may, perhaps, infer that the custom in Persia is at least as old as the sixth century of our era. A custom so remote from our modern ways must necessarily have its roots far back in the history of our race. Imagine a modern Englishman, whom his friends had given up for dead, rejoining the home circle by coming down the chimney instead of entering by the front door! In this paper I propose to show that the custom originated in certain primitive beliefs and observances touching the dead—beliefs and observances by no means confined to Greece and Rome, but occurring in similar if not identical forms in many parts of the world.

The importance attached by the Romans in common with most other nations to the due performance of burial rites is well known, and need not be insisted on. For the sake of my argument, however, it is necessary to point out that the attentions bestowed on the dead sprang not so much from the affections as from the fears of the survivors. For, as every one knows, ghosts of the unburied dead haunt the earth and make themselves exceedingly disagreeable, especially to their undutiful relatives. Instances would be superfluous; it is the way of ghosts all the world over, from Brittany to Samoa. But burial by itself was by no means a sufficient safeguard against the return of the ghost; many other precautions were taken by primitive man for the purpose of excluding or barring the importunate dead. Some of these precautions I will now enumerate. They exhibit an ingenuity and fertility of resource worthy of a better cause.

In the first place, an appeal was made to the better feelings of the ghost. He was requested to go quietly to the grave, and at the grave he was requested to stay there.

But to meet the possible case of hardened ghosts, upon whom moral persuasion would be thrown away, more energetic measures were resorted to. Thus among the South Slavonians and Bohemians, the bereaved family, returning from the grave, pelted the ghost of their deceased relative with sticks, stones, and hot coals. Ralston, "Songs of the Russian People," p. 319; Bastian, "Mensch," ii, p. 329. The Tschuwasche, a tribe in Finland, had not even the decency to wait till he was fairly in the grave, but opened fire on him as soon as the coffin was outside the house.

Again, heavy stones were piled on his grave to keep him down, on