Page:The Grateful Dead.djvu/180

164 much for the Medes after Marathon, and even Xerxes for the Lacedaemonians after Thermopylae. The story told by Cicero of Simonides gives definite proof of the concrete nature of the reverential feeling among both Greeks and Romans. Suetonius in his life of Caligula relates that when the emperor's body was left half burned and unburied, ghosts filled the palace and garden. An example of the mediaeval belief is found in the Middle High German Kudrun, written at the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth.

The Annamite tale cited in the third chapter and Servian VI., likewise summarized in connection with variants having the story-theme in simple form, bear witness to the effect that the widespread belief has had upon folk-tales now in circulation. The connection of these two tales with the märchen as such is so vague that they serve the end of illustrating its growth from popular belief rather than the relationship of one form to another. So also the story from Brittany, printed by Sébillot, which tells how a ghost came to workmen in a mill demanding Christian interment for its body then buried under the foundations, serves the same end, though no reward is mentioned. Sometimes the neglect of burial by a person brings unpleasant results to him, as is witnessed by a tale from Guernsey. A fisherman