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Rh to bury a body which he encountered on the coast, and, when he reached his home, found the ghost awaiting him. An Indian tale illustrates the belief that the dead become vampires when funeral rites are not performed.

In most versions of The Grateful Dead a corpse is left unburied either because creditors remain unpaid or the surviving relatives cannot pay for Christian burial. From sixteenth century Scotland we have evidence that the latter trait is based on actual custom. Sir David Lyndesaye, in The Monarche, while describing the exactions of the clergy, says:

This evidence for the widespread belief in the pious duty of burial and for the custom of withholding burial in cases where the dead man was poor, though it might easily be increased in bulk, makes very clear at least two matters. The tale of The Grateful Dead might have arisen almost anywhere and in almost any age since the time of the Egyptians. Again, when once it had been formed, it was likely to be reinforced or changed by the beliefs and customs prevalent in the lands to which it came.

The first matter at once suggests the question as to whether, after all, the märchen has not been more than once discovered by the imagination of story-tellers,—whether it has not sprung up again and again in different parts of the world like different botanical species,