Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/700

680 to after the burial for the purpose of barring the ghost were avoided so long as the corpse was in the house, from fear no doubt of hurting and offending the ghost. Thus we saw that an axe laid on the threshold or a knife hung over the door after the coffin has been carried out, has power to exclude the ghost, who could not enter without cutting himself. Conversely, so long as the corpse is still in the house, the use of sharp-edged instruments should be avoided in case they might wound the ghost. Thus for seven days after a death, the corpse being still in the house, the Chinese refrain from the use of knives and needles and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers. So at the memorial feasts to which they invited the dead, the Russians ate without using knives. In Germany a knife should not be left edge-upward, lest it hurt the ghosts or the angels. They even say that if you see a child in the fire and a knife on its back, you should run to the knife before the child. Again, we saw that the Romans and the Germans swept the ghost, without more ado, out of his own house. On the other hand, the more considerate negroes on the Congo abstain for a whole year from sweeping the house where a man has died, lest the dust should annoy the ghost. Again, we have seen the repugnance of ghosts to water. Hence, when a death took place, the Jews used to empty all the water in the house into the street, lest the ghost should fall in and be drowned. In Burmah, when the coffin is being carried out, every vessel in the house containing water is emptied. In some parts of Bohemia, after a death, they turn the water-butt upside down, because, if the ghost happened to bathe in it and any one drank of it afterward, he would be a dead man within the year. We can now appreciate the significance of the fact mentioned above, that in Greece the lustral water before the door of a house where a dead body lay had always to be fetched from a neighboring house. For, if the water had been taken from the house of death, who could tell but that the ghost might be disporting himself in it? In Pomerania, even after a burial, no washing is done in the house for some time, lest the dead man should be wet in his grave. Among the old Iranians no moisture was allowed to rest on the bread