THE UNBURIED DEAD
The Greeks believed that such as had not received funeral rites would
be excluded from Elysium. The younger Pliny tells the tale of a haunted
house at Athens, in which a ghost played all kinds of pranks owing to
the funeral rites having been neglected. It is still a deep-rooted
belief that when the mortal remains of the soul have not been honoured
with proper burial, it will walk. The ghosts of unburied persons not
possessing the _obolus_ or fee due to Charon, the ferryman of Styx, and
Acheron, were unable to obtain a lodging or place of rest. Hence they
were compelled to wander about the banks of the river for a hundred
years, when the portitor, or 'ferryman of hell,' passed them over _in
formâ pauperis_. The famous tragedy of 'Antigone' by Sophocles owes
much of its interest to this popular belief on the subject. In most
countries all kinds of strange tales are told of ghosts ceaselessly
wandering about the earth, owing to their bodies, for some reason or
another, having been left unburied.
There is a well known German ghost, the Bleeding Nun. This was a nun
who, after committing many crimes and debaucheries, was assassinated
by one of her paramours and denied the rites of burial. After this,
she used to haunt the castle where she was murdered, with her bleeding
wounds. On one occasion, a young lady of the castle, willing to elope
with her lover, in order to make her flight easier, personated the
bleeding nun. Unfortunately the lover, whilst expecting his lady under
this disguise, eloped with the spectre herself, who presented herself
to him and haunted him afterwards.[55]
Comparative folk-lore, too, shows how very widely diffused is this
notion. It is believed by the Iroquois of North America, that unless
the rites of burial are performed, the spirits of the dead hover for a
time upon the earth in great unhappiness. On this account every care
is taken to procure the bodies of those slain in battle. Certain
Brazilian tribes suppose that the spirits of the dead have no rest
till burial, and among the Ottawas, a great famine was thought to have
been produced on account of the failure of some of their tribesmen to
perform the proper burial rites. After having repaired their fault they
were blessed with abundance of provisions. The Australians went so far
as to say that the spirits of the unburied dead became dangerous and
malignant demons. Similarly, the Siamese dread, as likely to do them
some harm, the ghosts of those who have not been buried with proper
rites, and the Karens have much the same notion. According to the
Polynesians, the spirit of a dead man could not reach the sojourn of
his ancestors, and of the gods, unless the sacred funereal rites were
performed over his body. If he was buried with no ceremony, or simply
thrown into the sea, the spirit always remained in the body.[56]
Under one form or another, the same belief may be traced in most parts
of the world, and, as Dr. Tylor points out,[57] 'in mediæval Europe
the classic stories of ghosts that haunt the living till laid by
rites of burial pass here and there into new legends where, under a
changed dispensation, the doleful wanderer now asks Christian burial in
consecrated earth.' Shakespeare alludes to this old idea, and in 'Titus
Andronicus' (i. 2) Lucius, speaking of the unburied sons of Titus, says:
Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile
_Ad manes fratrum_ sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthly prison of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeas'd,
Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth.
Hence the appearance of a spirit, in times past, was often regarded
as an indication that some foul deed had been done, on which account
Horatio in 'Hamlet' (i. 1) says to the ghost:
If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me.
In the narrative of the sufferings of Byron and the crew of H.M. ship
'Wager,' on the coast of South America, we find a good illustration
of the superstitious dread attaching to an unburied corpse. 'The
reader will remember the shameful rioting, mutiny, and recklessness
which disgraced the crew of the "Wager," nor will he forget the
approach to cannibalism and murder on one occasion. These men had
just returned from a tempestuous navigation, in which their hopes
of escape had been crushed, and now what thoughts disturbed their
rest--what serious consultations were they which engaged the attention
of these sea-beaten men? Long before Cheap's Bay had been left, the
body of a man had been found on a hill named "Mount Misery." He was
supposed to have been murdered by some of the first gang who left the
island. The body had never been buried, and to such neglect did the
men now ascribe the storms which had lately afflicted them; nor would
they rest until the remains of their comrade were placed beneath the
earth, when each evidently felt as if some dreadful spell had been
removed from his spirit.' Stories of this kind are common everywhere,
and are interesting as showing how widely scattered is this piece of
superstition.
In Sweden the ravens, which scream by midnight in forest swamps and
wild moors, are held to be the ghosts of murdered men, whose bodies
have been hidden in those spots by their undetected murderers, and
not had Christian burial.[58] In many a Danish legend the spirit of
a strand varsler, or coast-guard, appears, walking his beat as when
alive. Such ghosts were not always friendly, and it was formerly
considered dangerous to pass along 'such unconsecrated beaches,
believed to be haunted by the spectres of unburied corpses of drowned
people.'[59]
The reason, it is asserted, why many of our old castles and country
seats have their traditional ghost, is owing to some unfortunate
person having been secretly murdered in days past, and to his or her
body having been allowed to remain without the rites of burial. So
long as such a crime is unavenged, and the bones continue unburied,
it is impossible, we are told, for the outraged spirit to keep quiet.
Numerous ghost stories are still circulated throughout the country of
spirits wandering on this account, some of which, however, are based
purely on legendary romance.
But when the unburied body could not be found, and the ghost wandered,
the missing man was buried in effigy, for, as it has been observed,
'according to all the laws of primitive logic, an effigy is every
bit as good as its original. Therefore, when a dead man is buried in
effigy, with all due formality, that man is dead and buried beyond a
doubt, and his ghost is as harmless as it is in the nature of ghosts to
be.' But sometimes such burial by proxy was premature, for the man was
not really dead; and if he declined to consider himself as such, the
question arose, was he alive, or was he dead? The solution adopted was
that he might be born again and take a new lease of life. 'And so it
was, he was put out to nurse, he was dressed in long clothes--in short,
he went through all the stages of a second childhood. But before this
pleasing experience could take place, he had to overcome the initial
difficulty of entering his own house, for the door was ghost-proof.
There was no other way but by the chimney, and down the chimney he
came.' We may laugh at such credulity, but many of the ghost-beliefs of
the present day are not less absurd.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Yardley's _Supernatural in Fiction_, p. 93.
[56] Letourneau's _Sociology_, p. 257.
[57] _Primitive Culture_, ii. p. 29; Douce's _Illustrations of
Shakespeare_, pp. 450, 451.
[58] Henderson's _Folk-lore of Northern Counties_, p. 126, note.
[59] Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, ii. p. 166.