Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/701

Rh offered to the dead, for, of course, if the bread was damp, the ghost could not get at it.

Once more, we saw that fire was a great stumbling-block to ghosts. Hence in the Highlands of Scotland and in Burmah the fires in a house used always to be extinguished when a death took place, no doubt lest they should burn the ghost. So in old Iran no fire was allowed to be used in the house for nine days after a death, and in later times every fire in the Persian Empire was extinguished in the interval between the death and burial of a king.

It might perhaps be thought that the common practice of fasting after a death was a direct consequence of this disuse of fire; and there are facts which appear at first sight to show that it was so. Thus the Chinese, though they are not allowed to cook in the house for seven days after a death, are not prohibited from eating food which has been prepared elsewhere; indeed, during this period of mourning their wants are regularly supplied by their neighbors. From this it would appear that the prohibition only extends to food cooked in the house of mourning. But this explanation will not suit the German superstition, that while the passing-bell is tolling no one within hearing should eat. For here the prohibition evidently extends to all the food in the neighborhood. The key to the solution of this problem will perhaps be found in the Samoan usage. We are told that in Samoa, "while a dead body is in the house, no food is eaten under the same roof; the family have their meals outside or in another house. Those who attended the deceased were formerly most careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants." Observe here, firstly, that the objection is not to all eating, but only to eating under the same roof with the dead; and, secondly, that those who have been in contact with the dead may eat but may not touch their food. Now, considering that the ghost could be cut, burned, drowned, bruised with stones, and squeezed in a door (for it is a rule in Germany not to slam a door on Saturday for fear of jamming a ghost), it seems not unreasonable to suppose that a ghost could be