Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/229

Rh book in which the peasant records the names of his relatives as they die.

"What is it all for?" I asked. "It is the food for the dead," my friend answered.

A priest and a deacon were standing at the near end of the spread of illuminated food, and they read aloud from sheaves of papers the names of dead persons whom members of the church had wished to have remembered. Each person who had brought in food for sanctification brought also a slip of paper with the names of his dead. It took hours to read them all out, and when at last the task was finished, the deacon took a smoking censer, and walking round the feast flung incense over it, the chains of the censer rattling as he made the sign of the Cross. We sang once more the festal hymn of Easter, Christos voskrese iz mertvikh—"Christ is risen from the dead,"—sung at every service until Ascension, and then, after kissing the cross in the priest's hand, each person sought out his special basin of rice and pieces of cake and bowl of coloured eggs and moved out of the church.

At the door of the church stood many beggars, six or seven bearded, tattered, and dirty old men, and a score or so of women and children. All the old men had their mouths open, and each worshipper, as he made his exit, helped a beggar liberally to rice and jam, scooping out great spoonfuls with wooden spoons and poking them into the open, waiting mouths. Many beggars had cotton bags