Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/265

Rh burial, is too complicated and extended to be more than barely referred to here, in connection with a few interesting customs still prevalent or lately extant in this country or in Europe. Examination shows that headstones in the old burial grounds of Plymouth, Concord, Old Deerfield, and Rutland, Mass., face the west, so that if the dead could rise to a standing posture they would face the east, long associated "with light and warmth, life and happiness and glory." It is customary among the Irish peasantry in County Cork to lay the dead "to be waked" in a similar position, as well as to dig the grave east and west. These customs are directly derived from the usage that prevailed through medieval times of digging the grave east and west and placing the head toward the latter point, a practice which doubtless was an outgrowth of the legend that Christ after death was thus laid. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey has found that the Indians of the Kansas and Omaha tribes place the dead with the head toward the east, consequently no living Omaha will lie in this position. According to Schoolcraft, the Winnebagoes buried their dead in a sitting posture with the face west, or at full length with the feet west, "in order that they may look toward the happy land in the west." An interesting observation made by Mr. Dorsey is that in singing one of their sacred songs the Kansas Indians were accustomed to raise their left hands, beginning at their left with the east wind, then turning to the south wind, then to the west wind, and last to the north wind, thus completing the dextral circuit. So far as I can gather from the writings of Schoolcraft and others, and from some questioning of experts in Indian customs, there would seem to have been no one rule common to all the North American tribes with regard to the position of the grave with reference to the points of the compass. Some preference for the east-andwest position seems to have existed among certain tribes, but their mode of interment was often modified to suit the contour of the land about their villages.

In a religious observance called "paying rounds" much practiced by the Irish peasantry, one finds an interesting instance of the dextral circuit. "Rounds" are paid for the cure of any disease or ailment, either by the person afflicted or vicariously for him by his mother, if living, or, if not, by some near friend. Servant girls in the United States, when ill, sometimes write home to Ireland and have rounds paid for them. The required rites may be performed at the grave of some holy priest, perhaps one who in his day wrought miracles, or at the grave of a priest who, before dying, gave directions that it would be right and fitting there to