CHAPTER IV. THE OFFICIAL FESTIVALS OF OSIRIS.

§ 1. The Festival at Sais.

(M41) Such, then, were the principal events of the farmer’s calendar in

ancient Egypt, and such the simple religious rites by which he celebrated

them. But we have still to consider the Osirian festivals of the official

calendar, so far as these are described by Greek writers or recorded on

the monuments. In examining them it is necessary to bear in mind that on

account of the movable year of the old Egyptian calendar the true or

astronomical dates of the official festivals must have varied from year to

year, at least until the adoption of the fixed Alexandrian year in 30 B.C.

From that time onward, apparently, the dates of the festivals were

determined by the new calendar, and so ceased to rotate throughout the

length of the solar year. At all events Plutarch, writing about the end of

the first century, implies that they were then fixed, not movable; for

though he does not mention the Alexandrian calendar, he clearly dates the

festivals by it.(97) Moreover, the long festal calendar of Esne, an

important document of the Imperial age, is obviously based on the fixed

Alexandrian year; for it assigns the mark for New Year’s Day to the day

which corresponds to the twenty-ninth of August, which was the first day

of the Alexandrian year, and its references to the rising of the Nile, the

position of the sun, and the operations of agriculture are all in harmony

with this supposition.(98) Thus we may take it as fairly certain that from

30 B.C. onwards the Egyptian festivals were stationary in the solar year.

(M42) Herodotus tells us that the grave of Osiris was at Sais in Lower

Egypt, and that there was a lake there upon which the sufferings of the

god were displayed as a mystery by night.(99) This commemoration of the

divine passion was held once a year: the people mourned and beat their

breasts at it to testify their sorrow for the death of the god; and an

image of a cow, made of gilt wood with a golden sun between its horns, was

carried out of the chamber in which it stood the rest of the year.(100)

The cow no doubt represented Isis herself, for cows were sacred to her,

and she was regularly depicted with the horns of a cow on her head,(101)

or even as a woman with the head of a cow.(102) It is probable that the

carrying out of her cow-shaped image symbolized the goddess searching for

the dead body of Osiris; for this was the native Egyptian interpretation

of a similar ceremony observed in Plutarch’s time about the winter

solstice, when the gilt cow was carried seven times round the temple.(103)

A great feature of the festival was the nocturnal illumination. People

fastened rows of oil-lamps to the outside of their houses, and the lamps

burned all night long. The custom was not confined to Sais, but was

observed throughout the whole of Egypt.(104)

This universal illumination of the houses on one night of the year

suggests that the festival may have been a commemoration not merely of the

dead Osiris but of the dead in general, in other words, that it may have

been a night of All Souls.(105) For it is a widespread belief that the

souls of the dead revisit their old homes on one night of the year; and on

that solemn occasion people prepare for the reception of the ghosts by

laying out food for them to eat, and lighting lamps to guide them on their

dark road from and to the grave. The following instances will illustrate

the custom.

§ 2. Feasts of All Souls.

(M43) The Esquimaux of St. Michael and the lower Yukon River in Alaska

hold a festival of the dead every year at the end of November or the

beginning of December, as well as a greater festival at intervals of

several years. At these seasons, food, drink, and clothes are provided for

the returning ghosts in the _kashim_ or clubhouse of the village, which is

illuminated with oil lamps. Every man or woman who wishes to honour a dead

friend sets up a lamp on a stand in front of the place which the deceased

used to occupy in the clubhouse. These lamps, filled with seal oil, are

kept burning day and night till the festival is over. They are believed to

light the shades on their return to their old home and back again to the

land of the dead. If any one fails to put up a lamp in the clubhouse and

to keep it burning, the shade whom he or she desires to honour could not

find its way to the place and so would miss the feast. On the eve of the

festival the nearest male relation goes to the grave and summons the ghost

by planting there a small model of a seal spear or of a wooden dish,

according as the deceased was a man or a woman. The badges of the dead are

marked on these implements. When all is ready, the ghosts gather in the

fire-pit under the clubhouse, and ascending through the floor at the

proper moment take possession of the bodies of their namesakes, to whom

the offerings of food, drink, and clothing are made for the benefit of the

dead. Thus each shade obtains the supplies he needs in the other world.

The dead who have none to make offerings to them are believed to suffer

great destitution. Hence the Esquimaux fear to die without leaving behind

them some one who will sacrifice to their spirits, and childless people

generally adopt children lest their shades should be forgotten at the

festivals. When a person has been much disliked, his ghost is sometimes

purposely ignored, and that is deemed the severest punishment that could

be inflicted upon him. After the songs of invitation to the dead have been

sung, the givers of the feast take a small portion of food from every dish

and cast it down as an offering to the shades; then each pours a little

water on the floor so that it runs through the cracks. In this way they

believe that the spiritual essence of all the food and water is conveyed

to the souls. The remainder of the food is afterwards distributed among

the people present, who eat of it heartily. Then with songs and dances the

feast comes to an end, and the ghosts are dismissed to their own place.

Dances form a conspicuous feature of the great festival of the dead, which

is held every few years. The dancers dance not only in the clubhouse but

also at the graves and on the ice, if the deceased met their death by

drowning.(106)

The Indians of California used to observe annual ceremonies of mourning

for the dead,(107) at some of which the souls of the departed were

represented by living persons. Ten or more men would prepare themselves to

play the part of the ghosts by fasting for several days, especially by

abstaining from flesh. Disguised with paint and soot, adorned with

feathers and grasses, they danced and sang in the village or rushed about

in the forest by night with burning torches in their hands. After a time

they presented themselves to the relations of the deceased, who looked

upon these maskers as in very truth their departed friends and received

them accordingly with an outburst of lamentation, the old women scratching

their own faces and smiting their breasts with stones in token of

mourning. These masquerades were generally held in February. During their

continuance a strict fast was observed in the village.(108) Among the

Konkaus of California the dance of the dead is always held about the end

of August and marks their New Year’s Day. They collect a large quantity of

food, clothing, baskets, ornaments, and whatever else the spirits are

supposed to need in the other world. These they hang on a semicircle of

boughs or small trees, cut and set in the ground leafless. In the centre

burns a great fire, and hard by are the graves. The ceremony begins at

evening and lasts till daybreak. As darkness falls, men and women sit on

the graves and wail for the dead of the year. Then they dance round the

fire with frenzied yells and whoops, casting from time to time the

offerings into the flames. All must be consumed before the first faint

streaks of dawn glimmer in the East.(109) The Choctaws used to have a

great respect for their dead. They did not bury their bodies but laid them

on biers made of bark and supported by forked sticks about fifteen feet

high. When the worms had consumed the flesh, the skeleton was dismembered,

any remains of muscles and sinews were buried, and the bones were

deposited in a box, the skull being reddened with ochre. The box

containing the bones was then carried to the common burial ground. In the

early days of November the tribe celebrated a great festival which they

called the Festival of the Dead or of the Souls; every family then

gathered in the common burial ground, and there with weeping and

lamentation visited the boxes which contained the mouldering relics of

their dead. On returning from the graveyard they held a great banquet,

which ended the festival.(110) Some of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico

“believe that on a certain day (in August, I think) the dead rise from

their graves and flit about the neighbouring hills, and on that day all

who have lost friends carry out quantities of corn, bread, meat, and such

other good things of this life as they can obtain, and place them in the

haunts frequented by the dead, in order that the departed spirits may once

more enjoy the comforts of this nether world. They have been encouraged in

this belief by the priests, who were in the habit of sending out and

appropriating to themselves all these things, and then making the poor

simple Indians believe that the dead had eaten them.”(111)

(M44) The Miztecs of Mexico believed that the souls of the dead came back

in the twelfth month of every year, which corresponded to our November. On

this day of All Souls the houses were decked out to welcome the spirits.

Jars of food and drink were set on a table in the principal room, and the

family went forth with torches to meet the ghosts and invite them to

enter. Then returning themselves to the house they knelt around the table,

and with eyes bent on the ground prayed the souls to accept of the

offerings and to procure the blessings of the gods upon the family. Thus

they remained on bended knees and with downcast eyes till the morning, not

daring to look at the table lest they should offend the spirits by spying

on them at their meal. With the first beams of the sun they rose, glad at

heart. The jars of food which had been presented to the dead were given to

the poor or deposited in a secret place.(112) The Indians of Santiago

Tepehuacan believe that the souls of their dead return to them on the

night of the eighteenth of October, the festival of St. Luke, and they

sweep the roads in order that the ghosts may find them clean on their

passage.(113)

(M45) Again, the natives of Sumba, an East Indian island, celebrate a New

Year’s festival, which is at the same time a festival of the dead. The

graves are in the middle of the village, and at a given moment all the

people repair to them and raise a loud weeping and wailing. Then after

indulging for a short time in the national pastimes they disperse to their

houses, and every family calls upon its dead to come back. The ghosts are

believed to hear and accept the invitation. Accordingly betel and areca

nuts are set out for them. Victims, too, are sacrificed in front of every

house, and their hearts and livers are offered with rice to the dead.

After a decent interval these portions are distributed amongst the living,

who consume them and banquet gaily on flesh and rice, a rare event in

their frugal lives. Then they play, dance, and sing to their heart’s

content, and the festival which began so lugubriously ends by being the

merriest of the year. A little before daybreak the invisible guests take

their departure. All the people turn out of their houses to escort them a

little way. Holding in one hand the half of a coco-nut, which contains a

small packet of provisions for the dead, and in the other hand a piece of

smouldering wood, they march in procession, singing a drawling song to the

accompaniment of a gong and waving the lighted brands in time to the

music. So they move through the darkness till with the last words of the

song they throw away the coco-nuts and the brands in the direction of the

spirit-land, leaving the ghosts to wend their way thither, while they

themselves return to the village.(114)

(M46) In Kiriwina, one of the Trobriand Islands, to the east of New

Guinea, the spirits of the ancestors are believed to revisit their native

village in a body once a year after the harvest has been got in. At this

time the men perform special dances, the people openly display their

valuables, spread out on platforms, and great feasts are made for the

spirits. On a certain night, when the moon is at the full, all the people

raise a great shout and so drive away the spirits to the spirit land.(115)

The Sea Dyaks of Borneo celebrate a great festival in honour of the dead

at irregular intervals, it may be one or more years after the death of a

particular person. All who have died since the last feast was held, and

have not yet been honoured by such a celebration, are remembered at this

time; hence the number of persons commemorated may be great, especially if

many years have elapsed since the last commemoration service. The

preparations last many weeks: food and drink and all other necessaries are

stored in plenty, and the whole neighbourhood for miles round is invited

to attend. On the eve of the feast the women take bamboo splints and

fashion out of them little models of various useful articles, and these

models are hung over the graves for the use of the dead in the other

world. If the feast is held in honour of a man, the things manufactured in

his behoof will take the form of a bamboo gun, a shield, a war-cap, and so

on; if it is a woman who is commemorated, little models of a loom, a

fish-basket, a winnowing-fan and such like things will be provided for her

spirit; and if it is a child for whom the rite is performed, toys of

various kinds will be made ready for the childish ghost. Finally, to stay

the appetite of ghosts who may be too sharp-set to wait for the formal

banquet in the house, a supply of victuals is very considerately placed

outside the house on which the hungry spirits may fall to without delay.

The dead arrive in a boat from the other world; for living Dyaks generally

travel by river, from which it necessarily follows that Dyak ghosts do so

likewise. The ship in which the ghostly visitors voyage to the land of the

living is not much to look at, being in appearance nothing but a tiny boat

made out of a bamboo which has been used to cook rice. Even this is not

set floating on the river but is simply thrown away under the house. Yet

through the incantations uttered by the professional wailing-woman the

bark is wafted away to the spirit world and is there converted into a

large war-canoe. Gladly the ghosts embark and sail away as soon as the

final summons comes. It always comes in the evening, for it is then that

the wailer begins to croon her mournful ditties; but the way is so long

that the spirits do not arrive in the house till the day is breaking. To

refresh them after their weary journey a bamboo full of rice-spirit awaits

them; and this they partake of by deputy, for a brave old man, who does

not fear the face of ghosts, quaffs the beverage in their stead amid the

joyful shouts of the spectators. On the morning after the feast the living

pay the last offices of respect to the dead. Monuments made of ironwood,

the little bamboo articles, and food of all kinds are set upon the graves.

In consideration of these gifts the ghosts now relinquish all claims on

their surviving relatives, and henceforth earn their own living by the

sweat of their brow. Before they take their final departure they come to

eat and drink in the house for the last time.(116)

(M47) Thus the Dyak festival of the dead is not an annual welcome accorded

to all the souls of ancestors; it is a propitiatory ceremony designed to

secure once for all the eternal welfare of the recently departed, or at

least to prevent their ghosts from returning to infest and importune the

living. The same is perhaps the intention of the “soul departure” (_Kathi

Kasham_) festival which the Tangkul Nagas of Manipur, in Assam, celebrate

every year about the end of January. At this great feast the dead are

represented by living men, chosen on the ground of their likeness to the

departed, who are decked with ornaments and treated as if they were in

truth the deceased persons come to life again. In that character they

dance together in the large open space of the village, they are fed by the

female relations, and they go from house to house, receiving presents of

cloth. The festival lasts ten days, but the great day is the ninth. Huge

torches of pinewood are made ready to be used that evening when darkness

has fallen. The time of departure of the dead is at hand. Their living

representatives are treated to a last meal in the houses, and they

distribute farewell presents to the sorrowing kinsfolk, who have come to

bid them good-bye. When the sun has set, a procession is formed. At the

head of it march men holding aloft the flaring, sputtering torches. Then

follow the elders armed and in martial array, and behind them stalk the

representatives of the dead, with the relations of the departed crowding

and trooping about them. Slowly and mournfully the sad procession moves,

with loud lamentations, through the darkness to a spot at the north end of

the village which is overshadowed by a great tree. The light of the

torches is to guide the souls of the dead to their place of rest; the

warlike array of the elders is to guard them from the perils and dangers

of the way. At the village boundary the procession stops and the

torch-bearers throw down their torches. At the same moment the spirits of

the dead are believed to pass into the dying flambeaux and in that guise

to depart to the far country. There is therefore no further need for their

living representatives, who are accordingly stripped of all their finery

on the spot. When the people return home, each family is careful to light

a pine torch and set it burning on a stone in the house just inside the

front door; this they do as a precaution to prevent their own souls from

following the spirits of the dead to the other world. The expense of thus

despatching the dead to their long home is very great; when the head of a

family dies, debts may be incurred and rice-fields and houses sold to

defray the cost of carriage. Thus the living impoverish themselves in

order to enrich the dead.(117)

(M48) The Oraons or Uraons of Bengal feast their dead every year on a day

in January. This ceremony is called the Great Marriage, because by it the

bones of the deceased are believed to be mysteriously reunited to each

other. The Oraons treat the bones of the dead differently according to the

dates of their death in the agricultural year. The bones of those who died

before the seeds have sprouted in the fields are burnt, and the few

charred bones which have not been reduced to ashes are gathered in an

earthen pot. With the bones in the pot are placed offerings of rice,

native gin, and money, and then they carry the urn to the river, where the

bones of their forefathers repose. But the bones of all who die after the

seeds have sprung up and before the end of harvest may not be taken to the

river, because the people believe that were that to be done the crops

would suffer. These bones are therefore put away in a pot under a stone

near the house till the harvest is over. Then on the appointed day in

January they are all collected. A banquet is given in honour of the dead,

and then both men and women form a procession to accompany the bones to

their last resting-place in the sands of the river. But first the relics

of mortality are carried from house to house in the village, and each

family pours rice and gin into the urn which contains the bones of its

dead. Then the procession sets out for the river, men and women dancing,

singing, beating drums, and weeping, while the earthen pots containing the

bones are passed from hand to hand and dance with the jigging steps of the

dancers. When they are yet some way from the spot, the bearers of the urns

run forward and bury them in the sand of the river. When the rest come up,

they all bathe and the Great Marriage is over.(118)

(M49) In the Bilaspore district of the Central Provinces, India, “the

festival known as the Fortnight of the Manes—_Pitr Pāk_—occurs about

September. It is believed that during this fortnight it is the practice of

all the departed to come and visit their relatives. The homes are

therefore cleaned, and the spaces in front of the house are plastered and

painted in order to be pleasing to those who are expected. It is believed

that the departed will return on the very date on which they went away. A

father who left on the fourth, be it the fourth of the dark half or the

light half of the moon, will return to visit his family on the fourth of

the Fortnight of the Manes. On that day cakes are prepared, and with

certain ceremony these are offered to the unseen hovering spirit. Their

implicit belief is that the spirit will partake of the essence of the

food, and that which remains—the material portion—may be eaten by members

of the family. The souls of women, it is said, will all come on the ninth

of the fortnight. On the thirteenth come those who have met with a violent

death and who lost their lives by a fall, by snake-bite, or any other

unusual cause. During the Fortnight of the Manes a woman is not supposed

to put on new bangles and a man is not permitted to shave. In short, this

is a season of sad remembrances, an annual festival for the

departed.”(119)

(M50) The Bghais, a Karen tribe of Burma, hold an annual feast for the

dead at the new moon which falls near the end of August or the beginning

of September. All the villagers who have lost relatives within the last

three years take part in it. Food and drink are set out on tables for the

ghosts, and new clothes for them are hung up in the room. All being ready,

the people beat gongs and begin to weep. Each one calls upon the relation

whom he has lost to come and eat. When the dead are thought to have

arrived, the living address them, saying, “You have come to me, you have

returned to me. It has been raining hard, and you must be wet. Dress

yourselves, clothe yourselves with these new garments, and all the

companions that are with you. Eat betel together with all that accompany

you, all your friends and associates, and the long dead. Call them all to

eat and drink.” The ghosts having finished their repast, the people dry

their tears and sit down to eat what is left. More food is then prepared

and put into a basket, and at cock-crow next morning the contents of the

basket are thrown out of the house, while the living weep and call upon

their dead as before.(120) The Hkamies, a hill tribe of North Aracan, hold

an important festival every year in honour of departed spirits. It falls

after harvest and is called “the opening of the house of the dead.” When a

person dies and has been burnt, the ashes are collected and placed in a

small house in the forest together with his spear or gun, which has first

been broken. These little huts are generally arranged in groups near a

village, and are sometimes large enough to be mistaken for one. After

harvest all the relations of the deceased cook various kinds of food and

take them with pots of liquor distilled from rice to the village of the

dead. There they open the doors of the houses, and having placed the food

and drink inside they shut them again. After that they weep, eat, drink,

and return home.(121)

(M51) The great festival of the dead in Cambodia takes place on the last

day of the month Phatrabot (September-October), but ever since the moon

began to wane everybody has been busy preparing for it. In every house

cakes and sweetmeats are set out, candles burn, incense sticks smoke, and

the whole is offered to the ancestral shades with an invocation which is

thrice repeated: “O all you our ancestors who are departed, deign to come

and eat what we have prepared for you, and to bless your posterity and

make it happy.” Fifteen days afterwards many little boats are made of bark

and filled with rice, cakes, small coins, smoking incense sticks, and

lighted candles. At evening these are set floating on the river, and the

souls of the dead embark in them to return to their own place. The living

now bid them farewell. “Go to the lands,” they say, “go to the fields you

inhabit, to the mountains, under the stones which are your abodes. Go

away! return! In due time your sons and your grandsons will think of you.

Then you will return, you will return, you will return.” The river is now

covered with twinkling points of fire. But the current soon bears them

away, and as they vanish one by one in the darkness the souls depart with

them to the far country.(122) In Tonquin, as in Sumba, the dead revisit

their kinsfolk and their old homes at the New Year. From the hour of

midnight, when the New Year begins, no one dares to shut the door of his

house for fear of excluding the ghosts, who begin to arrive at that time.

Preparations have been made to welcome and refresh them after their long

journey. Beds and mats are ready for their weary bodies to repose upon,

water to wash their dusty feet, slippers to comfort them, and canes to

support their feeble steps. Candles burn on the domestic altar, and

pastilles diffuse a fragrant odour. The people bow before the unseen

visitors and beseech them to remember and bless their descendants in the

coming year. Having discharged this pious duty they abstain from sweeping

the houses for three days lest the dust should incommode the ghosts.(123)

(M52) In Annam one of the most important festivals of the year is the

festival of Têt, which falls on the first three days of the New Year. It

is devoted to the worship of ancestors. Everybody, even the poorest, must

provide a good meal for the souls of his dead at this time and must

himself eat and drink heartily. Some families, in order to discharge this

pious duty, run into debt for the whole year. In the houses everything is

put in order, washed, and scoured for the reception of the dear and

distinguished guests. A tall bamboo pole is set up in the front of every

house and allowed to stand there for seven days. A small basket containing

areca, betel, and leaves of gilt paper is fastened to the pole. The

erection of the pole is a sacred rite which no family omits to perform,

though why they do so few people can say. Some, however, allege that the

posts are intended to guide the ancestral spirits to their old homes. The

ceremony of the reception of the shades takes place at nightfall on the

last day of the year. The house of the head of the family is then decked

with flowers, and in the room which serves as a domestic chapel the altar

of the ancestors is surrounded with flowers, among which the lotus, the

emblem of immortality, is most conspicuous. On a table are set red

candles, perfumes, incense, sandal-wood, and plates full of bananas,

oranges, and other fruits. The relations crouch before the altar, and

kneeling at the foot of it the head of the house invokes the name of the

family which he represents. Then in solemn tones he recites an

incantation, mentioning the names of his most illustrious ancestors and

marking time with the strokes of a hammer upon a gong, while crackers are

exploded outside the room. After that, he implores the ancestral shades to

protect their descendants and invites them to a repast, which is spread

for them on a table. Round this table he walks, serving the invisible

guests with his own hands. He distributes to them smoking balls of rice in

little china saucers, and pours tea or spirits into each little cup, while

he murmurs words of invitation and compliment. When the ghosts have eaten

and drunk their fill, the head of the family returns to the altar and

salutes them for the last time. Finally, he takes leaves of yellow paper,

covered with gold and silver spangles, and throws them into a brazier

placed at the foot of the ancestral tablets. These papers represent

imaginary bars of gold and silver which the living send to the dead.

Cardboard models of houses, furniture, jewels, clothes, of everything in

short that the ghosts can need in the other world, are despatched to them

in like manner in the flames. Then the family sits down to table and

feasts on the remains of the ghostly banquet.(124)

(M53) But in Annam it is not merely the spirits of ancestors who are thus

feasted and supplied with all the necessaries of life. The poor ghosts of

those who died without leaving descendants or whose bodies were left

unburied are not forgotten by the pious Annamites. But these spirits come

round at a different time of year from the others. The seventh month of

the year is set apart for expiatory sacrifices destined to benefit these

unhappy beings, and that is why in Annam nobody should marry or be

betrothed in that month. The great day of the month is the fifteenth,

which is called the Festival of the Souls. On that day the ghosts in

question are set free by the lord of the underworld, and they come

prowling about among the living. They are exceedingly dangerous,

especially to children. Hence in order to appease their wrath and prevent

them from entering the houses every family takes care to put out offerings

for them in the street. Before every house on that night you may see

candles lighted, paper garments of many colours, paper hats, paper boots,

paper furniture, ingots of gold and silver paper, all hanging in tempting

array from a string, while plates of food and cups of tea and rice-spirit

stand ready for the use of hungry and thirsty souls. The theory is that

the ghosts will be so busy consuming the victuals, appropriating the

deceitful riches, and trying on the paper coats, hats, and boots that they

will have neither the leisure nor the inclination to intrude upon the

domestic circle indoors. At seven o’clock in the evening fire is put to

the offerings, and the paper wardrobe, furniture, and money soon vanish

crackling in the flames. At the same moment, peeping in at a door or

window, you may see the domestic ancestral altar brilliantly illuminated.

As for the food, it is supposed to be thrown on the fire or on the ground

for the use of the ghosts, but practically it is eaten by vagabonds and

beggars, who scuffle for the booty.(125)

(M54) In Cochinchina the ancestral spirits are similarly propitiated and

fed on the first day of the New Year. The tablets which represent them are

placed on the domestic altar, and the family prostrate themselves before

these emblems of the departed. The head of the family lights sticks of

incense on the altar and prays the shades of his forefathers to accept the

offerings and be favourable to their descendants. With great gravity he

waits upon the ghosts, passing dishes of food before the ancestral tablets

and pouring out wine and tea to slake the thirst of the spirits. When the

dead are supposed to be satisfied with the shadowy essence of the food,

the living partake of its gross material substance.(126) In Siam and Japan

also the souls of the dead revisit their families for three days in every

year, and the lamps which the Japanese kindle in multitudes on that

occasion to light the spirits on their way have procured for the festival

the name of the Feast of Lanterns. It is to be observed that in Siam, as

in Tonquin and Sumba, the return of the ghosts takes place at the New

Year.(127)

(M55) The Chewsurs of the Caucasus believe that the souls of the departed

revisit their old homes on the Saturday night of the second week in Lent.

This gathering of the dead is called the “Assembly of Souls.” The people

spare no expense to treat the unseen guests handsomely. Beer is brewed and

loaves of various shapes baked specially for the occasion.(128) The

Armenians celebrate the memory of the dead on many days of the year,

burning incense and lighting tapers in their honour. One of their customs

is to keep a “light of the dead” burning all night in the house in order

that the ghosts may be able to enter. For if the spirits find the house

dark, they spit down the chimney and depart, cursing the churlish

inmates.(129)

(M56) Early in April every year the Dahomans of West Africa “set a table,

as they term it, and invite friends to eat with the deceased relatives,

whose spirits are supposed to move round and partake of the good things of

this life. Even my interpreter, Madi-Ki Lemon, who pretends to despise the

belief in fetish, sets a table to his ancestors, and will tell you that

his grand- or great-grandfather, Corporal Lemon, makes a meal on this

occasion which will last him till the next annual feast.”(130) The Barea

and apparently the Kunama, two heathen tribes who lead a settled

agricultural life to the north of Abyssinia, celebrate every year a

festival in the month of November. It is a festival of thanksgiving for

the completion of the harvest, and at the same time a commemoration and

propitiation of the dead. Every house prepares much beer for the occasion,

and a small pot of beer is set out for each deceased member of the

household. After standing for two days in the house the beer which was

devoted to the dead is drunk by the living. At these festivals all the

people of a district meet in a special place, and there pass the time in

games and dances. Among the Barea the festive gatherings are held in a

sacred grove. We are told that “he who owes another a drubbing on this day

can pay his debt with impunity; for it is a day of peace when all feuds

are in abeyance.” Wild honey may not be gathered till the festival has

been held.(131) Apparently the festival is a sort of Saturnalia, such as

is celebrated elsewhere at the end of harvest.(132) At that season there

is food and to spare for the dead as well as the living.

(M57) Among peoples of the Aryan stock, so far back as we can trace their

history, the worship and propitiation of the dead seem to have formed a

principal element of the popular religion;(133) and like so many other

races they appear to have believed that once a year the souls of their

departed kinsfolk revisited their old homes and expected to be refreshed

with abundance of good cheer by their surviving relations. This belief

gave rise to the custom of celebrating an annual Feast of All Souls, which

has come down to us from a dateless antiquity and is still observed year

by year, with rites of primitive simplicity, in some parts of Europe. Such

a festival was held every year in spring by the old Iranians. The

celebration fell at the end of the year and lasted ten days, namely the

last five days of the last month and the five following supplementary

days, which were regularly inserted to make up a year of three hundred and

sixty-five days; for the old Iranian, like the old Egyptian, year was a

vague year of twelve months of thirty days each, with five supplementary

days added at the end for the sake of bringing it into apparent, though

not real, harmony with the sun’s annual course in the sky. According to

one calculation the ten days of the festival corresponded to the last days

of February, but according to another they fell in March; in later ages

the Parsees assigned them to the time of the spring equinox. The name of

the festival was Hamaspathmaedaya.(134) From a passage in the

_Zend-Avesta_, the ancient sacred book of the Iranians, we learn that on

the ten nights of the festival the souls of the dead (the Fravashis) were

believed to go about the village asking the people to do them reverence,

to pray to them, to meditate on them, and to furnish them with meat and

clothes, while at the same time they promised that blessings should rest

on the pious householder who complied with their request.(135) The Arab

geographer Albiruni, who flourished about the year one thousand of our

era, tells us that among the Persians of his time the last five days of

the month Aban were called Farwardajan. “During this time,” he says,

“people put food in the halls of the dead and drink on the roofs of the

houses, believing that the spirits of their dead during these days come

out from the places of their reward or their punishment, that they go to

the dishes laid out for them, imbibe their strength and suck their taste.

They fumigate their houses with juniper, that the dead may enjoy its

smell. The spirits of the pious men dwell among their families, children,

and relations, and occupy themselves with their affairs, although

invisible to them.” He adds that there was a controversy among the

Persians as to the date of this festival of the dead, some maintaining

that the five days during which it lasted were the last five days of the

month Aban, whereas others held that they were the five supplementary days

which were inserted between the months Aban and Adhar. The dispute, he

continues, was settled by the adoption of all ten days for the celebration

of the feast.(136)

(M58) Similar beliefs as to the annual return of the dead survive to this

day in many parts of Europe and find expression in similar customs. The

day of the dead or of All Souls, as we call it, is commonly the second of

November. Thus in Lower Brittany the souls of the departed come to visit

the living on the eve of that day. After vespers are over, the priests and

choir walk in procession, “the procession of the charnel-house,” chanting

a weird dirge in the Breton tongue. Then the people go home, gather round

the fire, and talk of the departed. The housewife covers the kitchen table

with a white cloth, sets out cider, curds, and hot pancakes on it, and

retires with the family to rest. The fire on the hearth is kept up by a

huge log known as “the log of the dead” (_kef ann Anaon_). Soon doleful

voices outside in the darkness break the stillness of night. It is the

“singers of death” who go about the streets waking the sleepers by a wild

and melancholy song, in which they remind the living in their comfortable

beds to pray for the poor souls in pain. All that night the dead warm

themselves at the hearth and feast on the viands prepared for them.

Sometimes the awe-struck listeners hear the stools creaking in the

kitchen, or the dead leaves outside rustling under the ghostly

footsteps.(137) In the Vosges Mountains on All Souls’ Eve the solemn sound

of the church bells invites good Christians to pray for the repose of the

dead. While the bells are ringing, it is customary in some families to

uncover the beds and open the windows, doubtless in order to let the poor

souls enter and rest. No one that evening would dare to remain deaf to the

appeal of the bells. The prayers are prolonged to a late hour of the

night. When the last _De profundis_ has been uttered, the head of the

family gently covers up the beds, sprinkles them with holy water, and

shuts the windows. In some villages fire is kept up on the hearth and a

basket of nuts is placed beside it for the use of the ghosts.(138) Again,

in some parts of Saintonge and Aunis a Candlemas candle used to be lit

before the domestic crucifix on All Souls’ Day at the very hour when the

last member of the family departed this life; and some people, just as in

Tonquin, refrained from sweeping the house that day lest they should

thereby disturb the ghostly visitors.(139)

(M59) In Bruges, Dinant, and other towns of Belgium holy candles burn all

night in the houses on the Eve of All Souls, and the bells toll till

midnight, or even till morning. People, too, often set lighted candles on

the graves. At Scherpenheuvel the houses are illuminated, and the people

walk in procession carrying lighted candles in their hands. A very common

custom in Belgium is to eat “soul-cakes” or “soul-bread” on the eve or the

day of All Souls. The eating of them is believed to benefit the dead in

some way. Perhaps originally, as among the Esquimaux of Alaska to this

day,(140) the ghosts were thought to enter into the bodies of their

relatives and so to share the victuals which the survivors consumed.

Similarly at festivals in honour of the dead in Northern India it is

customary to feed Brahmans, and the food which these holy men partake of

is believed to pass to the deceased and to refresh their languid

spirits.(141) The same idea of eating and drinking by proxy may perhaps

partly explain many other funeral feasts. Be that as it may, at Dixmude

and elsewhere in Belgium they say that you deliver a soul from Purgatory

for every cake you eat. At Antwerp they give a local colour to the

soul-cakes by baking them with plenty of saffron, the deep yellow tinge

being suggestive of the flames of Purgatory. People in Antwerp at the same

season are careful not to slam doors or windows for fear of hurting the

ghosts.(142)

(M60) In Lechrain, a district of Southern Bavaria which extends along the

valley of the Lech from its source to near the point where the river flows

into the Danube, the two festivals of All Saints and All Souls, on the

first and second of November, have significantly fused in popular usage

into a single festival of the dead. In fact, the people pay little or no

heed to the saints and give all their thoughts to the souls of their

departed kinsfolk. The Feast of All Souls begins immediately after vespers

on All Saints’ Day. Even on the eve of All Saints’ Day, that is, on the

thirty-first of October, which we call Hallowe’en, the graveyard is

cleaned and every grave adorned. The decoration consists in weeding the

mounds, sprinkling a layer of charcoal on the bare earth, and marking out

patterns on it in red service-berries. The marigold, too, is still in

bloom at that season in cottage gardens, and garlands of its orange

blooms, mingled with other late flowers left by the departing summer, are

twined about the grey mossgrown tombstones. The basin of holy water is

filled with fresh water and a branch of box-wood put into it; for box-wood

in the popular mind is associated with death and the dead. On the eve of

All Souls’ Day the people begin to visit the graves and to offer the

soul-cakes to the hungry souls. Next morning, before eight o’clock,

commence the vigil, the requiem, and the solemn visitation of the graves.

On that day every household offers a plate of meal, oats, and spelt on a

side-altar in the church; while in the middle of the sacred edifice a bier

is set, covered with a pall, and surrounded by lighted tapers and vessels

of holy water. The tapers burnt on that day and indeed generally in

services for the departed are red. In the evening people go, whenever they

can do so, to their native village, where their dear ones lie in the

churchyard; and there at the graves they pray for the poor souls, and

leave an offering of soul-cakes also on a side-altar in the church. The

soul-cakes are baked of dough in the shape of a coil of hair and are made

of all sizes up to three feet long. They form a perquisite of the

sexton.(143)

(M61) The custom of baking soul-cakes, sometimes called simply “souls,” on

All Souls’ Day is widespread in Southern Germany and Austria;(144)

everywhere, we may assume, the cakes were originally intended for the

benefit of the hungry dead, though they are often eaten by the living. In

the Upper Palatinate people throw food into the fire on All Souls’ Day for

the poor souls, set lights on the table for them, and pray on bended knees

for their repose. On the graves, too, lights are kindled, vessels of holy

water placed, and food deposited for the refreshment of the souls. All

over the Upper Palatinate on All Souls’ Day it is also customary to bake

special cakes of fine bread and distribute them to the poor,(145) who eat

them perhaps as the deputies of the dead.

(M62) The Germans of Bohemia observe All Souls’ Day with much solemnity.

Each family celebrates the memory of its dead. On the eve of the day it is

customary to eat cakes and to drink cold milk for the purpose of cooling

the poor souls who are roasting in purgatory; from which it appears that

spirits feel the soothing effect of victuals consumed vicariously by their

friends on earth. The ringing of the church bells to prayer on that

evening is believed to be the signal at which the ghosts, released from

the infernal gaol, come trooping to the old familiar fire-side, there to

rest from their pangs for a single night. So in many places people fill a

lamp with butter, light it, and set it on the hearth, that with the butter

the poor ghosts may anoint the burns they have received from the

sulphureous and tormenting flames of purgatory. Next morning the chime of

the church bells, ringing to early mass, is the knell that bids the souls

return to their place of pain; but such as have completed their penance

take flight to heaven. So on the eve of All Saints’ Day each family

gathers in the parlour or the kitchen, speaks softly of those they have

lost, recalls what they said and did in life, and prays for the repose of

their souls. While the prayer is being said, the children kindle little

wax lights which have been specially bought for the purpose that day. Next

morning the families go to church, where mass is celebrated for the dead;

then they wend their way to the churchyard, where they deck the graves of

their kinsfolk with flowers and wreaths and set little lights upon them.

This custom of illumining the graves and decking them with flowers on the

Eve or Day of All Souls is common all over Bohemia; it is observed in

Prague as well as in the country, by Czechs as well as by Germans. In some

Czech villages four-cornered cakes of a special sort, baked of white

wheaten meal with milk, are eaten on All Souls’ Day or given to beggars

that they may pray for the dead.(146) Among the Germans of Western Bohemia

poor children go from house to house on All Souls’ Day, begging for

soul-cakes, and when they receive them they pray God to bless all poor

souls. In the southern districts every farmer used to grind a great

quantity of corn against the day and to bake it into five or six hundred

little black soul-cakes which he gave away to the poor who came begging

for them.(147)

(M63) All Souls’ Day is celebrated with similar rites by the Germans of

Moravia. “The festival of the farewell to summer,” says a German writer on

this subject, “was held by our heathen forefathers in the beginning of

November, and with the memory of the departed summer they united the

memory of the departed souls, and this last has survived in the Feast of

All Souls, which is everywhere observed with great piety. On the evening

of All Souls the relations of the departed assemble in the churchyards and

adorn the graves of their dear ones with flowers and lights, while the

children kindle little wax tapers, which have been bought for them, to

light the ‘poor souls.’ According to the popular belief, the dead go in

procession to the church about midnight, and any stout-hearted young man

can there see all the living men who will die within the year.”(148)

(M64) In the Tyrol the beliefs and customs are similar. There, too,

“soul-lights,” that is, lamps filled with lard or butter are lighted and

placed on the hearth on All Souls’ Eve in order that poor souls, escaped

from the fires of purgatory, may smear the melted grease on their burns

and so alleviate their pangs. Some people also leave milk and dough-nuts

for them on the table all night. The graves also are illuminated with wax

candles and decked with such a profusion of flowers that you might think

it was springtime.(149) In the Italian Tyrol it is customary to give bread

or money to the poor on All Souls’ Day; in the Val di Ledro children

threaten to dirty the doors of houses if they do not get the usual dole.

Some rich people treat the poor to bean-soup on that day. Others put

pitchers full of water in the kitchen on All Souls’ night that the poor

souls may slake their thirst.(150) In Baden it is still customary to deck

the graves with flowers and lights on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

The lights are sometimes kindled in hollow turnips, on the sides of which

inscriptions are carved and shine out in the darkness. If any child steals

a turnip-lantern or anything else from a grave, the indignant ghost who

has been robbed appears to the thief the same night and reclaims his

stolen property. A relic of the old custom of feeding the dead survives in

the practice of giving soul-cakes to godchildren.(151)

(M65) The Letts used to entertain and feed the souls of the dead for four

weeks from Michaelmas (September 29) to the day of St. Simon and St. Jude

(October 28). They called the season _Wellalaick_ or _Semlicka_, and

regarded it as so holy that while it lasted they would not willingly

thresh the corn, alleging that grain threshed at that time would be

useless for sowing, since the souls of the dead would not allow it to

sprout. But we may suspect that the original motive of the abstinence was

a fear lest the blows of the flails should fall upon the poor ghosts

swarming in the air. At this season the people were wont to prepare food

of all sorts for the spirits and set it on the floor of a room, which had

been well heated and swept for the purpose. Late in the evening the master

of the house went into the room, tended the fire, and called upon his dead

kinsfolk by their names to come and eat and drink. If he saw the ghosts,

he would die within the year; but if he did not see them he would outlive

it. When he thought the souls had eaten and drunk enough, he took the

staff which served as a poker and laying it on the threshold cut it in two

with an axe. At the same time he bade the spirits go their way, charging

them to keep to the roads and paths and not to tread upon the rye. If the

crops turned out ill next year, the people laid the failure at the door of

the ghosts, who fancied themselves scurvily treated and had taken their

revenge by trampling down the corn.(152) The Samagitians annually invited

the dead to come from their graves and enjoy a bath and a feast. For their

entertainment they prepared a special hut, in which they set out food and

drink, together with a seat and a napkin for every soul who had been

invited. They left the souls to revel by themselves for three days in the

hut; then they deposited the remains of the banquet on the graves and bade

the ghosts farewell. The good things, however, were usually consumed by

charcoal burners in the forest. This feast of the dead fell early in

November.(153) The Esthonians prepare a meal for their dead on All Souls’

Day, the second of November, and invite them by their names to come and

partake of it. The ghosts arrive in the early morning at the first

cock-crow, and depart at the second, being ceremoniously lighted out of

the house by the head of the family, who waves a white cloth after them

and bids them come again next year.(154)

(M66) In some parts of the Russian Government of Olonets the inhabitants

of a village sometimes celebrate a joint festival in honour of all their

dead. Having chosen a house for the purpose, they spread three tables, one

outside the front door, one in the passage, and one in the room which is

heated by a stove. Then they go out to meet their unseen guests and usher

them into the house with these words, “Ye are tired, our own ones; take

something to eat.” The ghosts accordingly refresh themselves at each table

in succession. Then the master of the house bids them warm themselves at

the stove, remarking that they must have grown cold in the damp earth.

After that the living guests sit down to eat at the tables. Towards the

end of the meal the host opens the window and lets the ghosts gently out

of it by means of the shroud in which they were lowered into the grave. As

they slide down it from the warm room into the outer air, the people tell

them, “Now it is time for you to go home, and your feet must be tired; the

way is not a little one for you to travel. Here it is softer for you. Now,

in God’s name, farewell!”(155)

(M67) Among the Votiaks of Russia every family sacrifices to its dead once

a year in the week before Palm Sunday. The sacrifice is offered in the

house about midnight. Flesh, bread, or cakes and beer are set on the

table, and on the floor beside the table stands a trough of bark with a

lighted wax candle stuck on the rim. The master of the house, having

covered his head with his hat, takes a piece of meat in his hand and says,

“Ye spirits of the long departed, guard and preserve us well. Make none of

us cripples. Send no plagues upon us. Cause the corn, the wine, and the

food to prosper with us.”(156) The Votiaks of the Governments of Wjatka

and Kasan celebrate two memorial festivals of the dead every year, one in

autumn and the other in spring. On a certain day koumiss is distilled,

beer brewed, and potato scones baked in every house. All the members of a

clan, who trace their descent through women from one mythical ancestress,

assemble in a single house, generally in one which lies at the boundary of

the clan land. Here an old man moulds wax candles; and when the requisite

number is made he sticks them on the shelf of the stove, and begins to

mention the dead relations of the master of the house by name. For each of

them he crumbles a piece of bread, gives each of them a piece of pancake,

pours koumiss and beer, and puts a spoonful of soup into a trough made for

the purpose. All persons present whose parents are dead follow his

example. The dogs are then allowed to eat out of the trough. If they eat

quietly, it is a sign that the dead live at peace; if they do not eat

quietly, it argues the contrary. Then the company sit down to table and

partake of the meal. Next morning both the dead and the living refresh

themselves with a drink, and a fowl is boiled. The proceedings are the

same as on the evening before. But now they treat the souls for the last

time as a preparation for their journey, saying: “Eat, drink, and go home

to your companions. Live at peace, be gracious to us, keep our children,

guard our corn, our beasts and birds.” Then the people banquet and indulge

in all sorts of improprieties. The women refrain from feasting until the

dead have taken their departure; but when the souls are gone, there is no

longer any motive for abstinence, the koumiss circulates freely among the

women, and they grow wanton. Yet at this, as at every other festival, the

men and women eat in different parts of the room.(157)

(M68) On All Saints’ Day, the first of November, shops and streets in the

Abruzzi are filled with candles, which people buy in order to kindle them

in the evening on the graves of their relations. For all the dead come to

visit their homes that night, the Eve of All Souls, and they need lights

to show them the way. For their use, too, lights are kept burning in the

houses all night. Before people go to sleep they place on the table a

lighted lamp or candle and a frugal meal of bread and water. The dead

issue from their graves and stalk in procession through every street of

the village. You can see them if you stand at a cross-road with your chin

resting on a forked stick. First pass the souls of the good, and then the

souls of the murdered and the damned. Once, they say, a man was thus

peeping at the ghastly procession. The good souls told him he had better

go home. He did not, and when he saw the tail of the procession he died of

fright.(158)

(M69) In our own country the old belief in the annual return of the dead

long lingered in the custom of baking “soul-cakes” and eating them or

distributing them to the poor on All Souls’ Day. Peasant girls used to go

from farmhouse to farmhouse on that day, singing,

“_Soul, soul, for a soul cake,_

_Pray you, good mistress, a soul cake._”(159)

In Shropshire down to the seventeenth century it was customary on All

Souls’ Day to set on the table a high heap of soul-cakes, and most

visitors to the house took one of them. The antiquary John Aubrey, who

records the custom, mentions also the appropriate verses:

“_A soul-cake, a soul-cake,_

_Have mercy on all Christen soules for a soule-cake._”(160)

Indeed the custom of soul-cakes survived in Shropshire down to the latter

part of the nineteenth century and may not be extinct even now. “With us,

All Saints’ Day is known as ‘Souling Day,’ and up to the present time in

many places, poor children, and sometimes men, go out ‘souling’: which

means that they go round to the houses of all the more well-to-do people

within reach, reciting a ditty peculiar to the day, and looking for a dole

of cakes, broken victuals, ale, apples, or money. The two latter are now

the usual rewards, but there are few old North Salopians who cannot

remember when ‘soul-cakes’ were made at all the farms and ‘bettermost’

houses in readiness for the day, and were given to all who came for them.

We are told of liberal housewives who would provide as many as a

clothes-basket full.”(161) The same custom of going out “a-souling” on All

Saints’ Day or All Souls’ Day used to be observed in the neighbouring

counties of Staffordshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Herefordshire, and

Monmouthshire. In Herefordshire the soul-cakes were made of oatmeal, and

he or she who received one of them was bound to say to the giver:

“_God have your saul,_

_Beens and all._”(162)

Thus the practice of “souling” appears to have prevailed especially in the

English counties which border on Wales. In many parts of Wales itself down

to the first half of the nineteenth century poor peasants used to go about

begging for bread on All Souls’ Day. The bread bestowed on them was called

_bara ran_ or dole-bread. “This custom was a survival of the Middle Ages,

when the poor begged bread for the souls of their departed relatives and

friends.”(163) However, the custom was not confined to the west of

England, for at Whitby in Yorkshire down to the early part of the

nineteenth century it was usual to make “soul mass loaves” on or about All

Souls’ Day. They were small round loaves, sold by bakers at a farthing

apiece, chiefly for presents to children. In former times people used to

keep one or two of them for good luck.(164) In Aberdeenshire, also, “on

All Souls’ Day, baked cakes of a particular sort are given away to those

who may chance to visit the house, where they are made. The cakes are

called ‘dirge-loaf.’ ”(165) Even in the remote island of St. Kilda it was

customary on All Saints’ Day to bake a large cake in the form of a

triangle, furrowed round; the cake must be all eaten that night.(166)

(M70) The same mode of celebrating All Souls’ Day has been transported by

Catholicism to the New World and imparted to the aborigines of that

continent. Thus in Carchi, a province of Ecuador, the Indians prepare

foods of various sorts against All Souls’ Day, and when the day has come

they take some of the provisions to the church and there deposit them on

tables set out for the purpose. These good things are the perquisite of

the priest, who celebrates mass for the dead. After the service the

Indians repair to the cemetery, where with burning candles and pots of

holy water they prostrate themselves before the tombs of their relations,

while the priest or the sacristan recites prayers for the souls of the

departed. In the evening the Indians return to their houses. A table with

four lights on it is spread with food and drink, especially with such

things as the dead loved in their life. The door is left open all night,

no doubt to let the spirits of the dead enter, and the family sits up,

keeping the invisible guests company through the long hours of darkness.

From seven o’clock and onwards troops of children traverse the village and

its neighbourhood. They go from house to house ringing a bell and crying,

“We are angels, we descend from the sky, we ask for bread.” The people go

to their doors and beg the children to recite a _Pater Noster_ or an _Ave

Maria_ for the dead whom they name. When the prayer has been duly said,

they give the children a little of the food from the table. All night long

this goes on, band succeeding band of children. At five o’clock in the

morning the family consumes the remainder of the food of the souls.(167)

Here the children going from door to door during the night of All Souls

appear to personate the souls of the dead who are also abroad at that

time; hence to give bread to the children is the same thing as to give

bread to the poor hungry souls. Probably the same explanation applies to

the giving of soul-cakes to children and the poor on All Souls’ Day in

Europe.

(M71) A comparison of these European customs with the similar heathen

rites can leave no room for doubt that the nominally Christian feast of

All Souls is nothing but an old pagan festival of the dead which the

Church, unable or unwilling to suppress, resolved from motives of policy

to connive at. But whence did it borrow the practice of solemnizing the

festival on that particular day, the second of November? In order to

answer this question we should observe, first, that celebrations of this

sort are often held at the beginning of a New Year,(168) and, second, that

the peoples of North-Western Europe, the Celts and the Teutons, appear to

have dated the beginning of their year from the beginning of winter, the

Celts reckoning it from the first of November(169) and the Teutons from

the first of October.(170) The difference of reckoning may be due to a

difference of climate, the home of the Teutons in Central and Northern

Europe being a region where winter sets in earlier than on the more

temperate and humid coasts of the Atlantic, the home of the Celts. These

considerations suggest that the festival of All Souls on the second of

November originated with the Celts, and spread from them to the rest of

the European peoples, who, while they preserved their old feasts of the

dead practically unchanged, may have transferred them to the second of

November. This conjecture is supported by what we know of the

ecclesiastical institution, or rather recognition, of the festival. For

that recognition was first accorded at the end of the tenth century in

France, a Celtic country, from which the Church festival gradually spread

over Europe. It was Odilo, abbot of the great Benedictine monastery of

Clugny, who initiated the change in 998 A.D. by ordering that in all the

monasteries over which he ruled, a solemn mass should be celebrated on the

second of November for all the dead who sleep in Christ. The example thus

set was followed by other religious houses, and the bishops, one after

another, introduced the new celebration into their dioceses. Thus the

festival of All Souls gradually established itself throughout Christendom,

though in fact the Church has never formally sanctioned it by a general

edict nor attached much weight to its observance. Indeed, when objections

were raised to the festival at the Reformation, the ecclesiastical

authorities seemed ready to abandon it.(171) These facts are explained

very simply by the theory that an old Celtic commemoration of the dead

lingered in France down to the end of the tenth century, and was then, as

a measure of policy and a concession to ineradicable paganism, at last

incorporated in the Catholic ritual. The consciousness of the heathen

origin of the practice would naturally prevent the supreme authorities

from insisting strongly on its observance. They appear rightly to have

regarded it as an outpost which they could surrender to the forces of

rationalism without endangering the citadel of the faith.

(M72) Perhaps we may go a step further and explain in like manner the

origin of the feast of All Saints on the first of November. For the

analogy of similar customs elsewhere would lead us to suppose that the old

Celtic festival of the dead was held on the Celtic New Year’s Day, that

is, on the first, not the second, of November. May not then the

institution of the feast of All Saints on that day have been the first

attempt of the Church to give a colour of Christianity to the ancient

heathen rite by substituting the saints for the souls of the dead as the

true object of worship? The facts of history seem to countenance this

hypothesis. For the feast of All Saints was instituted in France and

Germany by order of the Emperor Lewis the Pious in 835 A.D., that is,

about a hundred and sixty years before the introduction of the feast of

All Souls. The innovation was made by the advice of the pope, Gregory IV.,

whose motive may well have been that of suppressing an old pagan custom

which was still notoriously practised in France and Germany. The idea,

however, was not a novel one, for the testimony of Bede proves that in

Britain, another Celtic country, the feast of All Saints on the first of

November was already celebrated in the eighth century.(172) We may

conjecture that this attempt to divert the devotion of the faithful from

the souls of the dead to the saints proved a failure, and that finally the

Church reluctantly decided to sanction the popular superstition by frankly

admitting a feast of All Souls into the calendar. But it could not assign

the new, or rather the old, festival to the old day, the first of

November, since that was already occupied by the feast of All Saints.

Accordingly it placed the mass for the dead on the next day, the second of

November. On this theory the feasts of All Saints and of All Souls mark

two successive efforts of the Catholic Church to eradicate an old heathen

festival of the dead. Both efforts failed. “In all Catholic countries the

day of All Souls has preserved the serious character of a festival of the

dead which no worldly gaieties are allowed to disturb. It is then the

sacred duty of the survivors to visit the graves of their loved ones in

the churchyard, to deck them with flowers and lights, and to utter a

devout prayer—a pious custom with which in cities like Paris and Vienna

even the gay and frivolous comply for the sake of appearance, if not to

satisfy an impulse of the heart.”(173)

§ 3. The Festival in the Month of Athyr.

(M73) The foregoing evidence lends some support to the conjecture—for it

is only a conjecture—that the great festival of Osiris at Sais, with its

accompanying illumination of the houses, was a night of All Souls, when

the ghosts of the dead swarmed in the streets and revisited their old

homes, which were lit up to welcome them back again. Herodotus, who

briefly describes the festival, omits to mention its date, but we can

determine it with some probability from other sources. Thus Plutarch tells

us that Osiris was murdered on the seventeenth of the month Athyr, and

that the Egyptians accordingly observed mournful rites for four days from

the seventeenth of Athyr.(174) Now in the Alexandrian calendar, which

Plutarch used, these four days corresponded to the thirteenth, fourteenth,

fifteenth, and sixteenth of November, and this date answers exactly to the

other indications given by Plutarch, who says that at the time of the

festival the Nile was sinking, the north winds dying away, the nights

lengthening, and the leaves falling from the trees. During these four days

a gilt cow swathed in a black pall was exhibited as an image of Isis.

This, no doubt, was the image mentioned by Herodotus in his account of the

festival.(175) On the nineteenth day of the month the people went down to

the sea, the priests carrying a shrine which contained a golden casket.

Into this casket they poured fresh water, and thereupon the spectators

raised a shout that Osiris was found. After that they took some vegetable

mould, moistened it with water, mixed it with precious spices and incense,

and moulded the paste into a small moon-shaped image, which was then robed

and ornamented.(176) Thus it appears that the purpose of the ceremonies

described by Plutarch was to represent dramatically, first, the search for

the dead body of Osiris, and, second, its joyful discovery, followed by

the resurrection of the dead god who came to life again in the new image

of vegetable mould and spices. Lactantius tells us how on these occasions

the priests, with their shaven bodies, beat their breasts and lamented,

imitating the sorrowful search of Isis for her lost son Osiris, and how

afterwards their sorrow was turned to joy when the jackal-headed god

Anubis, or rather a mummer in his stead, produced a small boy, the living

representative of the god who was lost and was found.(177) Thus Lactantius

regarded Osiris as the son instead of the husband of Isis, and he makes no

mention of the image of vegetable mould. It is probable that the boy who

figured in the sacred drama played the part, not of Osiris, but of his son

Horus;(178) but as the death and resurrection of the god were celebrated

in many cities of Egypt, it is also possible that in some places the part

of the god come to life was played by a living actor instead of by an

image. Another Christian writer describes how the Egyptians, with shorn

heads, annually lamented over a buried idol of Osiris, smiting their

breasts, slashing their shoulders, ripping open their old wounds, until,

after several days of mourning, they professed to find the mangled remains

of the god, at which they rejoiced.(179) However the details of the

ceremony may have varied in different places, the pretence of finding the

god’s body, and probably of restoring it to life, was a great event in the

festal year of the Egyptians. The shouts of joy which greeted it are

described or alluded to by many ancient writers.(180)

§ 4. The Festival in the Month of Khoiak.

(M74) The funeral rites of Osiris, as they were observed at his great

festival in the sixteen provinces of Egypt, are described in a long

inscription of the Ptolemaic period, which is engraved on the walls of the

god’s temple at Denderah, the Tentyra of the Greeks, a town of Upper Egypt

situated on the western bank of the Nile about forty miles north of

Thebes.(181) Unfortunately, while the information thus furnished is

remarkably full and minute on many points, the arrangement adopted in the

inscription is so confused and the expression often so obscure that a

clear and consistent account of the ceremonies as a whole can hardly be

extracted from it. Moreover, we learn from the document that the

ceremonies varied somewhat in the several cities, the ritual of Abydos,

for example, differing from that of Busiris. Without attempting to trace

all the particularities of local usage I shall briefly indicate what seem

to have been the leading features of the festival, so far as these can be

ascertained with tolerable certainty.(182)

(M75) The rites lasted eighteen days, from the twelfth to the thirtieth of

the month Khoiak, and set forth the nature of Osiris in his triple aspect

as dead, dismembered, and finally reconstituted by the union of his

scattered limbs. In the first of these aspects he was called Chent-Ament

(Khenti-Amenti), in the second Osiris-Sep, and in the third Sokari

(Seker).(183) Small images of the god were moulded of sand or vegetable

earth and corn, to which incense was sometimes added;(184) his face was

painted yellow and his cheek-bones green.(185) These images were cast in a

mould of pure gold, which represented the god in the form of a mummy, with

the white crown of Egypt on his head.(186) The festival opened on the

twelfth day of Khoiak with a ceremony of ploughing and sowing. Two black

cows were yoked to the plough, which was made of tamarisk wood, while the

share was of black copper. A boy scattered the seed. One end of the field

was sown with barley, the other with spelt, and the middle with flax.

During the operation the chief celebrant recited the ritual chapter of

“the sowing of the fields.”(187) At Busiris on the twentieth of Khoiak

sand and barley were put in the god’s “garden,” which appears to have been

a sort of large flower-pot. This was done in the presence of the

cow-goddess Shenty, represented seemingly by the image of a cow made of

gilt sycamore wood with a headless human image in its inside. “Then fresh

inundation water was poured out of a golden vase over both the goddess and

the ‘garden’ and the barley was allowed to grow as the emblem of the

resurrection of the god after his burial in the earth, ‘for the growth of

the garden is the growth of the divine substance.’ ”(188) On the

twenty-second of Khoiak, at the eighth hour, the images of Osiris,

attended by thirty-four images of deities, performed a mysterious voyage

in thirty-four tiny boats made of papyrus, which were illuminated by three

hundred and sixty-five lights.(189) On the twenty-fourth of Khoiak, after

sunset, the effigy of Osiris in a coffin of mulberry wood was laid in the

grave, and at the ninth hour of the night the effigy which had been made

and deposited the year before was removed and placed upon boughs of

sycamore.(190) Lastly, on the thirtieth day of Khoiak they repaired to the

holy sepulchre, a subterranean chamber over which appears to have grown a

clump of Persea-trees. Entering the vault by the western door, they laid

the coffined effigy of the dead god reverently on a bed of sand in the

chamber. So they left him to his rest, and departed from the sepulchre by

the eastern door. Thus ended the ceremonies in the month of Khoiak.(191)

§ 5. The Resurrection of Osiris.

(M76) In the foregoing account of the festival, drawn from the great

inscription of Denderah, the burial of Osiris figures prominently, while

his resurrection is implied rather than expressed. This defect of the

document, however, is amply compensated by a remarkable series of

bas-reliefs which accompany and illustrate the inscription. These exhibit

in a series of scenes the dead god lying swathed as a mummy on his bier,

then gradually raising himself up higher and higher, until at last he has

entirely quitted the bier and is seen erect between the guardian wings of

the faithful Isis, who stands behind him, while a male figure holds up

before his eyes the _crux ansata_, the Egyptian symbol of life.(192) The

resurrection of the god could hardly be portrayed more graphically. Even

more instructive, however, is another representation of the same event in

a chamber dedicated to Osiris in the great temple of Isis at Philae. Here

we see the dead body of Osiris with stalks of corn springing from it,

while a priest waters the stalks from a pitcher which he holds in his

hand. The accompanying inscription sets forth that “this is the form of

him whom one may not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the

returning waters.”(193) Taken together, the picture and the words seem to

leave no doubt that Osiris was here conceived and represented as a

personification of the corn which springs from the fields after they have

been fertilized by the inundation. This, according to the inscription, was

the kernel of the mysteries, the innermost secret revealed to the

initiated. So in the rites of Demeter at Eleusis a reaped ear of corn was

exhibited to the worshippers as the central mystery of their

religion.(194) We can now fully understand why at the great festival of

sowing in the month of Khoiak the priests used to bury effigies of Osiris

made of earth and corn. When these effigies were taken up again at the end

of a year or of a shorter interval, the corn would be found to have

sprouted from the body of Osiris, and this sprouting of the grain would be

hailed as an omen, or rather as the cause, of the growth of the

crops.(195) The corn-god produced the corn from himself: he gave his own

body to feed the people: he died that they might live.

(M77) And from the death and resurrection of their great god the Egyptians

drew not only their support and sustenance in this life, but also their

hope of a life eternal beyond the grave. This hope is indicated in the

clearest manner by the very remarkable effigies of Osiris which have come

to light in Egyptian cemeteries. Thus in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes

there was found the tomb of a royal fan-bearer who lived about 1500 B.C.

Among the rich contents of the tomb there was a bier on which rested a

mattress of reeds covered with three layers of linen. On the upper side of

the linen was painted a life-size figure of Osiris; and the interior of

the figure, which was waterproof, contained a mixture of vegetable mould,

barley, and a sticky fluid. The barley had sprouted and sent out shoots

two or three inches long.(196) Again, in the cemetery at Cynopolis “were

numerous burials of Osiris figures. These were made of grain wrapped up in

cloth and roughly shaped like an Osiris, and placed inside a bricked-up

recess at the side of the tomb, sometimes in small pottery coffins,

sometimes in wooden coffins in the form of a hawk-mummy, sometimes without

any coffins at all.”(197) These corn-stuffed figures were bandaged like

mummies with patches of gilding here and there, as if in imitation of the

golden mould in which the similar figures of Osiris were cast at the

festival of sowing.(198) Again, effigies of Osiris, with faces of green

wax and their interior full of grain, were found buried near the

necropolis of Thebes.(199) Finally, we are told by Professor Erman that

between the legs of mummies “there sometimes lies a figure of Osiris made

of slime; it is filled with grains of corn, the sprouting of which is

intended to signify the resurrection of the god.”(200) We cannot doubt

that, just as the burial of corn-stuffed images of Osiris in the earth at

the festival of sowing was designed to quicken the seed, so the burial of

similar images in the grave was meant to quicken the dead, in other words,

to ensure their spiritual immortality.

§ 6. Readjustment of Egyptian Festivals.

(M78) The festival of Osiris which Plutarch assigns to the month of Athyr

would seem to be identical in substance with the one which the inscription

of Denderah assigns to the following month, namely, to Khoiak. Apparently

the essence of both festivals was a dramatic representation of the death

and resurrection of the god; in both of them Isis was figured by a gilt

cow, and Osiris by an image moulded of moist vegetable earth. But if the

festivals were the same, why were they held in different months? It is

easy to suggest that different towns in Egypt celebrated the festival at

different dates. But when we remember that according to the great

inscription of Denderah, the authority of which is indisputable, the

festival fell in the month of Khoiak in every province of Egypt, we shall

be reluctant to suppose that at some one place, or even at a few places,

it was exceptionally held in the preceding month of Athyr, and that the

usually well-informed Plutarch described the exception as if it had been

the rule, of which on this supposition he must have been wholly ignorant.

More probably the discrepancy is to be explained by the great change which

came over the Egyptian calendar between the date of the inscription and

the lifetime of Plutarch. For when the inscription was drawn up in the

Ptolemaic age the festivals were dated by the old vague or movable year,

and therefore rotated gradually through the whole circle of the seasons;

whereas at the time when Plutarch wrote, about the end of the first

century, they were seemingly dated by the fixed Alexandrian year, and

accordingly had ceased to rotate.(201)

(M79) But even if we grant that in Plutarch’s day the festivals had become

stationary, still this would not explain why the old festival of Khoiak

had been transferred to Athyr. In order to understand that transference it

seems necessary to suppose that when the Egyptians gave to their months

fixed places in the solar year by accepting the Alexandrian system of

intercalation, they at the same time transferred the festivals from what

may be called their artificial to their natural dates. Under the old

system a summer festival was sometimes held in winter and a winter

festival in summer; a harvest celebration sometimes fell at the season of

sowing, and a sowing celebration at the season of harvest. People might

reconcile themselves to such anomalies so long as they knew that they were

only temporary, and that in the course of time the festivals would

necessarily return to their proper seasons. But it must have been

otherwise when they adopted a fixed instead of a movable year, and so

arrested the rotation of the festivals for ever. For they could not but be

aware that every festival would thenceforth continue to occupy for all

time that particular place in the solar year which it chanced to occupy in

the year 30 B.C., when the calendar became fixed. If in that particular

year it happened, as it might have happened, that the summer festivals

were held in winter and the winter festivals in summer, they would always

be so held in future; the absurdity and anomaly would never again be

rectified as it had been before. This consideration, which could not have

escaped intelligent men, must have suggested the advisability of

transferring the festivals from the dates at which they chanced to be

celebrated in 30 B.C. to the dates at which they ought properly to be

celebrated in the course of nature.

(M80) Now what in the year 30 B.C. was the actual amount of discrepancy

between the accidental and the natural dates of the festivals? It was a

little more than a month. In that year Thoth, the first month of the

Egyptian calendar, happened to begin on the twenty-ninth of August,(202)

whereas according to theory it should have begun with the heliacal rising

of Sirius on the twentieth of July, that is, forty days or, roughly

speaking, a month earlier. From this it follows that in the year 30 B.C.

all the Egyptian festivals fell about a month later than their natural

dates, and they must have continued to fall a month late for ever if they

were allowed to retain those places in the calendar which they chanced to

occupy in that particular year. In these circumstances it would be a

natural and sensible thing to restore the festivals to their proper places

in the solar year by celebrating them one calendar month earlier than

before.(203) If this measure were adopted the festivals which had hitherto

been held, for example, in the third month Athyr would henceforth be held

in the second month Phaophi; the festivals which had hitherto fallen in

the fourth month Khoiak would thenceforth fall in the third month Athyr;

and so on. Thus the festal calendar would be reduced to harmony with the

seasons instead of being in more or less flagrant discord with them, as it

had generally been before, and must always have been afterwards if the

change which I have indicated had not been introduced. It is only to

credit the native astronomers and the Roman rulers of Egypt with common

sense to suppose that they actually adopted the measure. On that

supposition we can perfectly understand why the festival of sowing, which

had formerly belonged to the month of Khoiak, was transferred to Athyr.

For in the Alexandrian calendar Khoiak corresponds very nearly to

December, and Athyr to November. But in Egypt the month of November, not

the month of December, is the season of sowing. There was therefore every

reason why the great sowing festival of the corn-god Osiris should be held

in Athyr and not Khoiak, in November and not in December. In like manner

we may suppose that all the Egyptian festivals were restored to their true

places in the solar year, and that when Plutarch dates a festival both by

its calendar month and by its relation to the cycle of the seasons, he is

perfectly right in doing so, and we may accept his evidence with

confidence instead of having to accuse him of ignorantly confounding the

movable Egyptian with the fixed Alexandrian year. Accusations of ignorance

levelled at the best writers of antiquity are apt to recoil on those who

make them.(204)