For charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
Unquestionably it must have been customary in England thus to pelt a ghost
that was suspected of the intention to wander. The stake driven through
the suicide’s body was a summary and complete way of ensuring that the
ghost would not be troublesome.
Those Finns who fired guns after a dead man had another expedient for
holding him fast, and that was to nail him down in his coffin. The Arabs
tie his legs together. The Wallacks drive a long nail through the skull;
and this usage explains the many skulls that have been exhumed in Germany
thus perforated. The Icelanders, when a ghost proved troublesome, opened
the grave, cut off the dead man’s head, and made the body sit on it. That,
they concluded, would effectually puzzle it how to get about. The
Californian Indians were wont to break the spine of the corpse so as to
paralyse his lower limbs, and make “walking” impossible. Spirit and body
to the unreasoning mind are intimately associated. A hurt done to the body
wounds the soul. Mrs. Crowe, in her _Night Side of Nature_, tells a story
reversing this. A gentleman in Germany was dying--he expressed great
desire to see his son, who was a ne’er-do-well, and was squandering his
money in Paris. At that same time the young man was sitting on a bench in
the Bois de Boulogne, with a switch in his hand. Suddenly he saw his old
father before him. Convinced that he saw a phantom, he raised his switch,
and cut the apparition once, twice, and thrice across the face; and it
vanished. At that moment the dying father uttered a scream, and held his
hands to his face--“My boy! my boy! He is striking me again--again!” and
he died. The Algonquin Indians beat the walls of the death-chamber to
drive out the ghost; in Sumatra, a priest is employed with a broom to
sweep the ghost out. In Scotland, and in North Germany, the chairs on
which a coffin has rested are reversed, lest the dead man should take the
fancy to sit on them instead of going to his grave. In ancient Mexico,
certain professional ghost ejectors were employed, who, after a funeral,
were invited to visit and thoroughly explore the house whence the dead had
been removed, and if they found the ghost lurking about, in corners, in
cupboards, under beds--anywhere, to kick it out. In Siberia, after forty
days’ “law” given to the ghost, if it be still found loafing about, the
Schaman is sent for, who drums it out. He extorts brandy, which he
professes to require, as he has to conduct the deceased personally to the
land of spirits, where he will make it and the other guests so fuddled
that they will forget the way back to earth.
In North Germany a troublesome ghost is bagged, and the bag emptied in
some lone spot, or in the garden of a neighbour against whom a grudge is
entertained.
Another mode of getting rid of the spirit of the dear departed is to
confuse it as to its way home. This is done in various ways. Sometimes the
road by which it has been carried to its resting-place is swept to efface
the footprints, and a false track is made into a wood or on to a moor, so
that the ghost may take the wrong road. Sometimes ashes are strewn on the
road to hide the footprints. Sometimes the dead is carried rapidly three
or four times round the house so as to make him giddy, and not know in
which direction he is carried. The universal practice of closing the eyes
of the dead may be thought to have originated in the desire that he might
be prevented from seeing his way.
In many places it was, and is, customary for the dead body to be taken out
of the house, not through the door, but by a hole knocked in the wall for
the purpose, and backwards. In Iceland in the historic period this custom
was reserved for such as died in their seats and not in their beds. One or
two instances occur in the Sagas. In Corea, blinders made of black silk
are put on the dead man’s eyes, to prevent him from finding his way home.
Many savage nations entirely abandon a hut or a camp in which a death has
occurred for precisely the same reason--of throwing out the dead man’s
spirit.
It was a common practice in England till quite recently for the room in
which a death had occurred to be closed for some time, and this is merely
a survival of the custom of abandoning the place where a spirit has left
the body. The Esquimaux take out their dying relatives to huts constructed
of blocks of ice or snow, and leave them there to expire, for ghosts are
as stupid as they are troublesome, they have no more wits than a peacock,
they can only find their way to the place where they died.
Other usages are to divert a stream and bring the corpse in the river-bed,
or lay it beyond running water, which according to ghost-lore it cannot
pass. Or again, fires are lighted across its path, and it shrinks from
passing through flames. As for water, ghosts loathe it. Among the Matamba
negroes a widow is flung into the water and dipped repeatedly so as to
wash off the ghost of the dead husband, which is supposed to be clinging
to her. In New Zealand, among the Maoris, all who have followed the corpse
dive into water so as to throw off the ghost which is sneaking home after
them. In Tahiti, all who have assisted at a burial run as hard as they can
to the sea and take headers into it for the same object. It is the same in
New Guinea. We see the same idea reduced to a mere form in ancient Rome,
where in place of the dive through water, a vessel of water was carried
twice round those who had followed the corpse, and they were sprinkled.
The custom of washing and purification after a funeral practised by the
Jews is a reminiscence of the usage, with a novel explanation given to it.
In the South Pacific, in the Hervey Islands, after a death men turn out to
pummel and fight the returning spirit, and give it a good drubbing in the
air.
Now, perhaps, the reader may have been brought to understand what the
sundry mourning costumes originally meant. They were disguises whereby to
deceive the ghosts, so that they might not recognise and pester with
their undesired attentions the relatives who live. Indians who are wont to
paint themselves habitually, go after a funeral totally unbedecked with
colour. On the other hand, other savages daub themselves fantastically
with various colours, making themselves as unlike what they were
previously as is possible. The Coreans when in mourning assume hats with
low rims that conceal their features.
The Papuans conceal themselves under extinguishers made of banana leaves.
Elsewhere in New Guinea they envelop themselves in a wickerwork frame in
which they can hardly walk. Among the Mpongues of Western Africa, those
who on ordinary occasions wear garments walk in complete nudity when
suffering bereavement. Valerius Maximus tells us that among the Lycians it
was customary in mourning for the men to disguise themselves in women’s
garments.
The custom of cutting the hair short, and of scratching and disfiguring
the face, and of rending the garments, all originated from the same
thought--to make the survivors irrecognisable by the ghost of the
deceased. Plutarch asserts that the Sacæ, after a death, went down into
pits and hid themselves for days from the light of the sun. Australian
widows near the north-west bend of the Murray shave their heads and
plaster them with pipeclay, which, when dry, forms a close-fitting
skull-cap. The spirit of the late lamented on returning to his better
half either does not recognise his spouse, or is so disgusted with her
appearance that he leaves her for ever.
There is almost no end to the expedients adopted for getting rid of the
dead. Piles of stones are heaped over them, they are buried deep in the
earth, they are walled up in natural caves, they are enclosed in
megalithic structures, they are burned, they are sunk in the sea. They are
threatened, they are cajoled, they are hoodwinked. Every sort of trickery
is had recourse to, to throw them off the scent of home and of their
living relations.
The wives, horses, dogs slain and buried with them, the copious supplies
of food and drink laid on their graves, are bribes to induce them to be
content with their situation. Nay, further--in very many places no food
may be eaten in the house of mourning for many days after an interment.
The object of course is to disappoint the returning spirit, which comes
seeking a meal, finds none, comes again next day, finds none again, and
after a while desists from returning out of sheer disgust.
A vast amount of misdirected ingenuity is expended in bamboozling and
bullying the unhappy ghosts; but the feature most striking in these
proceedings is the unanimous agreement in considering these ghosts as such
imbeciles. When they put off their outward husk, they divest themselves of
all that cunning which is the form that intelligence takes in the savage.
Not only so, but although they remember and crave after home comforts,
they absolutely forget the tricks they had themselves played on the souls
of the dead in their own lifetime; they walk and blunder into the traps
which they had themselves laid for other ghosts in the days of their
flesh.
Perhaps the lowest abyss of dunder-headedness they have been supposed to
reach is when made to mistake their own identity. Recently near Mentone a
series of prehistoric interments in caves have been exposed. They reveal
the dead men as having had their heads daubed over with red oxide of iron.
Still extant races of savages paint, plaster, and disfigure their dead.
The prehistoric Greeks masked them. The Aztecs masked their deceased
kings, and the Siamese do so still. We cannot say with absolute certainty
what the object is--but we are probably not far out when we conjecture the
purpose to be to make the dead forget who they are when they look at their
reflection in the water. There was a favourite song sung some sixty years
ago relative to a little old woman who got “muzzy.” Whilst in this
condition some naughty boys cut her skirts at her knees. When she woke up
and saw her condition, “Lawk!” said the little old woman, “this never is
me!” And certain ancient peoples treated their dead in something the same
way; they disguised and disfigured them so that each ghost waking up
might exclaim, “Lawk! this never is me!” And so having lost its identity,
did not consider it had a right to revisit its old home and molest its old
acquaintances.