Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/690

670 the principle of "sit tibi terra gravis." This is the origin of funeral cairns and tombstones. As the ghosts of murderers and their victims are especially restless, every one who passes their graves in Arabia, in Germany, and in Spain, is bound to add a stone to the pile. In Oldenburg (and no doubt elsewhere) if the grave is shallow the ghost will certainly walk.

One of the most striking ways of keeping down the dead man is to divert the course of a river, bury him in its bed, and then allow the river to resume its course. It was thus that Alaric was buried, and Commander Cameron found the same mode of burial still in vogue for chieftains among a tribe in Central Africa,

The expedient of inclosing the grave with a fence too high for the ghost to "take" it, especially without a run, is common to Finland and the South Seas.

Another simple but effectual plan was to nail the dead man to the coffin (the Tschuwasche again), or to tie his feet together (among the Arabs), or his neck to his legs (among the Troglodytes, Damaras, and New-Zealanders). The Wallachians drive a long nail through the skull and lay the thorny stem of a wild rose-bush on the corpse. The Californians clinched matters by breaking his spine. The corpses of suicides and vampires had stakes run through them.

Other mutilations of the dead were intended not so much to keep the dead man in his grave as to render his ghost harmless. Thus the Australians cut off the right thumb of a slain enemy, that his ghost might not be able to draw the bow, and Greek murderers used to hack off the extremities of their victims with a similar object.

Again, various steps were taken to chase away the lingering ghost from the home he loved too well. Thus the New-Zealanders thrash the corpse in order to hasten the departure of the soul; the Algonquins beat the walls of the death-chamber with sticks to drive out the ghost; the Chinese knock on the floor with a hammer; and the