THE CULT OF THE DEAD.
The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or
slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead,
yet when such practices survive over a long period they assume the form
of a cult. These customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in
connection with the reverence for the sepulchres of the dead, they point
to a worship of ancestral spirits as well as of great departed heroes.
Heads of the slain were offered to the "strong shades"--the ghosts of
tribal heroes whose praises were sung by bards.[532] When such heads
were placed on houses, they may have been devoted to the family ghosts.
The honour in which mythic or real heroes were held may point to an
actual cult, the hero being worshipped when dead, while he still
continued his guardianship of the tribe. We know also that the tomb of
King Cottius in the Alps was a sacred place, that Irish kings were often
inaugurated on ancestral burial cairns, and that Irish gods were
associated with barrows of the dead.[533]
The cult of the dead culminated at the family hearth, around which the
dead were even buried, as among the Aeduii; this latter custom may have
been general.[534] In any case the belief in the presence of ancestral
ghosts around the hearth was widespread, as existing superstitions show.
In Brittany the dead seek warmth at the hearth by night, and a feast is
spread for them on All Souls' eve, or crumbs are left for them after a
family gathering.[535] But generally the family ghost has become a
brownie, lutin, or pooka, haunting the hearth and doing the household
work.[536] Fairy corresponds in all respects to old ancestral ghost, and
the one has succeeded to the place of the other, while the fairy is even
said to be the ghost of a dead person.[537] Certain archæological
remains have also a connection with this ancient cult. Among Celtic
remains in Gaul are found andirons of clay, ornamented with a ram's
head. M. Dechelette sees in this "the symbol of sacrifice offered to the
souls of ancestors on the altar of the hearth."[538] The ram was already
associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of fire on the hearth,
and by an easy transition it was connected with the cult of the dead
there. It is found as an emblem on ancient tombs, and the domestic Lar
was purified by the immolation of a ram.[539] Figurines of a ram have
been found in Gaulish tombs, and it is associated with the god of the
underworld.[540] The ram of the andirons was thus a permanent
representative of the victim offered in the cult of the dead. A
mutilated inscription on one of them may stand for _Laribus augustis_,
and certain markings on others may represent the garlands twined round
the victim.[541] Serpents with rams' heads occur on the monuments of the
underworld god. The serpent was a chthonian god or the emblem of such a
god, and it may have been thought appropriate to give it the head of an
animal associated with the cult of the dead.
The dead were also fed at the grave or in the house. Thus cups were
placed in the recess of a well in the churchyard of Kilranelagh by those
interring a child under five, and the ghost of the child was supposed to
supply the other spirits with water from these cups.[542] In Ireland,
after a death, food is placed out for the spirits, or, at a burial, nuts
are placed in the coffin.[543] In some parts of France, milk is poured
out on the grave, and both in Brittany and in Scotland the dead are
supposed to partake of the funeral feast.[544] These are survivals from
pagan times and correspond to the rites in use among those who still
worship ancestors. In Celtic districts a cairn or a cross is placed over
the spot where a violent or accidental death has occurred, the purpose
being to appease the ghost, and a stone is often added to the cairn by
all passers-by.[545]
Festivals were held in Ireland on the anniversaries of the death of
kings or chiefs, and these were also utilised for purposes of trade,
pleasure, or politics. They sometimes occurred on the great festivals,
e.g. Lugnasad and Samhain, and were occasionally held at the great
burial-places.[546] Thus the gathering at Taillti on Lugnasad was said
to have been founded by Lug in memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, and
the Leinstermen met at Carman on the same day to commemorate King
Garman, or in a variant account, a woman called Carman. She and her sons
had tried to blight the corn of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but the sons were
driven off and she died of grief, begging that a fair should always be
held in her name, and promising abundance of milk, fruit, and fish for
its observance.[547] These may be ætiological myths explaining the
origin of these festivals on the analogy of funeral festivals, but more
likely, since Lugnasad was a harvest festival, they are connected with
the custom of slaying a representative of the corn-spirit. The festival
would become a commemoration of all such victims, but when the custom
itself had ceased it would be associated with one particular personage,
the corn-goddess regarded as a mortal.
This would be the case where the victim was a woman, but where a male
was slain, the analogy of the slaying of the divine king or his
_succedaneum_ would lead to the festivals being regarded as
commemorative of a king, e.g. Garman. This agrees with the statement
that observance of the festival produced plenty; non-observance, dearth.
The victims were slain to obtain plenty, and the festival would also
commemorate those who had died for this good cause, while it would also
appease their ghosts should these be angry at their violent deaths.
Certain of the dead were thus commemorated at Lugnasad, a festival of
fertility. Both the corn-spirit or divinity slain in the reaping of the
corn, and the human victims, were appeased by its observance.[548] The
legend of Carman makes her hostile to the corn--a curious way of
regarding a corn-goddess. But we have already seen that gods of
fertility were sometimes thought of as causing blight, and in
folk-belief the corn-spirit is occasionally believed to be dangerous.
Such inversions occur wherever revolutions in religion take place.
The great commemoration of the dead was held on Samhain eve, a festival
intended to aid the dying powers of vegetation, whose life, however, was
still manifested in evergreen shrubs, in the mistletoe, in the sheaf of
corn from last harvest--the abode of the corn-spirit.[549] Probably,
also, human representatives of the vegetation or corn-spirit were slain,
and this may have suggested the belief in the presence of their ghosts
at this festival. Or the festival being held at the time of the death of
vegetation, the dead would naturally be commemorated then. Or, as in
Scandinavia, they may have been held to have an influence on fertility,
as an extension of the belief that certain slain persons represented
spirits of fertility, or because trees and plants growing on the barrows
of the dead were thought to be tenanted by their spirits.[550] In
Scandinavia, the dead were associated with female spirits or _fylgjur_,
identified with the _disir_, a kind of earth-goddesses, living in hollow
hills.[551] The nearest Celtic analogy to these is the _Matres_,
goddesses of fertility. Bede says that Christmas eve was called
_Modranicht_, "Mothers' Night,"[552] and as many of the rites of Samhain
were transferred to Yule, the former date of _Modranicht_ may have been
Samhain, just as the Scandinavian _Disablot_, held in November, was a
festival of the _disir_ and of the dead.[553] It has been seen that the
Celtic Earth-god was lord of the dead, and that he probably took the
place of an Earth-goddess or goddesses, to whom the _Matres_ certainly
correspond. Hence the connection of the dead with female Earth-spirits
would be explained. Mother Earth had received the dead before her place
was taken by the Celtic Dispater. Hence the time of Earth's decay was
the season when the dead, her children, would be commemorated. Whatever
be the reason, Celts, Teutons, and others have commemorated the dead at
the beginning of winter, which was the beginning of a new year, while a
similar festival of the dead at New Year is held in many other lands.
Both in Ireland and in Brittany, on November eve food is laid out for
the dead who come to visit the houses and to warm themselves at the fire
in the stillness of the night, and in Brittany a huge log burns on the
hearth. We have here returned to the cult of the dead at the
hearth.[554] Possibly the Yule log was once a log burned on the
hearth--the place of the family ghosts--at Samhain, when new fire was
kindled in each house. On it libations were poured, which would then
have been meant for the dead. The Yule log and the log of the Breton
peasants would thus be the domestic aspect of the fire ritual, which had
its public aspect in the Samhain bonfires.
All this has been in part affected by the Christian feast of All Souls.
Dr. Frazer thinks that the feast of All Saints (November 1st) was
intended to take the place of the pagan cult of the dead. As it failed
to do this, All Souls, a festival of all the dead, was added on November
2nd.[555] To some extent, but not entirely, it has neutralised the pagan
rites, for the old ideas connected with Samhain still survive here and
there. It is also to be noted that in some cases the friendly aspect of
the dead has been lost sight of, and, like the _síd_-folk, they are
popularly connected with evil powers which are in the ascendant on
Samhain eve.
FOOTNOTES:
[532] Silius Italicus, v. 652; Lucan, i. 447. Cf. p. 241, _infra_.
[533] Ammian. Marcell. xv. 10. 7; Joyce, _SH_ i. 45.
[534] Bulliot, _Fouilles du Mont Beuvray_, Autun, 1899, i. 76, 396.
[535] Le Braz, ii. 67; Sauvé, _Folk-lore des Hautes Vosges_, 295;
Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et Survivances_, i. 11.
[536] Hearn, _Aryan Household_, 43 f.; Bérenger-Féraud, i. 33; _Rev. des
Trad._ i. 142; Carmichael, ii. 329; Cosquin, _Trad. Pop. de la
Lorraine_, i. 82.
[537] Kennedy, 126. The mischievous brownie who overturns furniture and
smashes crockery is an exact reproduction of the Poltergeist.
[538] Dechelette, _Rev. Arch._ xxxiii, (1898), 63, 245, 252.
[539] Cicero, _De Leg._ ii. 22.
[540] Dechelette, 256; Reinach, _BF_ 189.
[541] Dechelette, 257-258. In another instance the ram is marked with
crosses like those engraved on images of the underworld god with the
hammer.
[542] Kennedy, 187.
[543] Lady Wilde, 118; Curtin, _Tales_, 54.
[544] Le Braz, i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, _Voyage dans le Finistère_,
i. 229.
[545] Le Braz, ii. 47; _Folk-Lore_, iv. 357; MacCulloch, _Misty Isle of
Skye_, 254; Sébillot, i. 235-236.
[546] Names of places associated with the great festivals are also those
of the chief pagan cemeteries, Tara, Carman, Taillti, etc. (O'Curry,
_MC_ ii. 523).
[547] _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 313-314.
[548] Cf. Frazer, _Adonis_, 134.
[549] Cf. Chambers, _Mediæval Stage_, i. 250, 253.
[550] See Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Boreale_, i. 405, 419. Perhaps
for a similar reason a cult of the dead may have occurred at the
Midsummer festival.
[551] Miss Faraday, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 398 f.
[552] Bede, _de Temp. Rat._ c. xv.
[553] Vigfusson-Powell, i. 419.
[554] Curtin, _Tales_, 157; Haddon, _Folk-Lore_, iv. 359; Le Braz, ii.
115 _et passim._
[555] Frazer, _Adonis_, 253 f.