Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/695

Rh funeral stepped over fire, and in China they sometimes do so to this day. Taken in connection with the Siberian custom, the original intention of this ceremony of stepping over fire at Rome and in China can hardly have been other than that of placing a barrier of fire between the living and the dead. But, as has been the case with so many other ceremonies, this particular ceremony may well have been practiced long after its original intention was forgotten. For customs often live on for ages after the circumstances and modes of thought which gave rise to them have disappeared, and in their new environment new motives are invented to explain them. As might have been expected, the custom itself of stepping over fire often dwindled into a mere shadow of its former self. Thus the South Slavonians returning from a funeral are met by an old woman carrying a vessel of live coals. On these they pour water, or else they take a live coal from the hearth and fling it over their heads. The Brahmans contented themselves with simply touching fire, and in Ruthenia the mourners merely look steadfastly at the stove or place their hands on it.

So much for the barrier by fire. Next for the barrier by water. "The Lusatian Wends," says Ralston, "still make a point of placing water between themselves and the dead as they return from a burial, even breaking ice for the purpose if necessary." In many parts of Germany, in modern Greece, and in Cyprus, water is poured out behind the corpse when it is carried from the house, in the belief that, if the ghost returns, he will not be able to cross it. Sometimes by night they pour holy water before the door; the ghost is then thought to stand and whimper on the farther side. The inability of spirits to cross water might be further illustrated from the Bagman's ghastly story in Apuleius, from Paulus's "History of the Lombards," from Giraldus Cambrensis's "Topography of Ireland," and from other sources.

Another way of enforcing the water barrier was for the mourners to plunge into a stream in the hope of drowning, or at least shaking off, the ghost. Thus, among the Matamba negroes, a widow is bound