QUEER BURIAL RITES

Evening Star, Issue 19797, 22 February 1928, Page 10

QUEER BURIAL RITES

The belief in the continuance of life beyond the grave is a universal human possession, and primitive folk could not conceive of a man’s soul surviving apart from his body. They further believed that the dead must continue to enjoy a similar existence to what they had previously led. Accordingly the corpse was buried with his tools, clothts, and money to serve him in the hereafter. The body of a Patagonian chief (says the Newcastle 1 Weekly Chronicle’) was laid i with his weapons and best garments in a square pit, round which dead horses were set upon their feet by stakes, so that he might ride to Alhuemapu, the country of the dead. In the Caucasus, a Christian lady’s jewels were buried with her, and a dead Hindu and his unhappy widow were interred together. The Eskimos leave a dead man’s body in his house with a dog’s head by Jiis side to guide him along his journey. After death, the Viking was laid on his ship with his personal belongings. The vessel was then set on fire, and was allowed to sail out to sea on its journey to Valhalla. The Egyptians, who believed that the dead crossed over water, fashioned the hearse in the shape of a boat, while the Parsecs exposed the corpse on a tower, leaving the flesh to be devoured by vultures, thus avoiding the greater horror of putrefaction. The. custom of the Greeks, who put an ohuhis into’ the mouth of the dead, is kept up by the German and Irish peasantry, who deposit a coin in the coffin.