salt.[1] At the opening of a coffin in St. Mary's Church, Leicester, not long ago there was found on the breast of the dead a plate made of tin which it was conjectured had contained salt.[2] In the neighbourhood of Salzwedel, in Altmark, a spoon and dish were, among other things, formerly put into the coffin.[3] It is impossible, however, to lay any stress on the last-mentioned custom, since salt is of frequent use against spirits and witches, and the articles buried with the dead may rather have been intended for use in the spirit-world than the relics of a funeral observance in the nature of a feast by the survivors. The occupant of the coffin at Leicester may have been a priest, for a paten of some inferior metal was commonly buried with a priest.
But I ought not to leave quite unmentioned as vestiges of a feast the custom which obtained in Wales as well as in England of giving small sponge-cakes to the funeral guests. In Yorkshire and elsewhere the last part of the funeral entertainment before the procession started for the churchyard was to hand round "glasses of wine and small round cakes of the crisp sponge description, of which most of the guests partook." These cakes were called "Avril bread". The word avril is said to be derived from arval, succession-ale, heir-ale, the name of the feasts held by Icelandic heirs on succeeding to property.[4] Many other survivals of funeral feasts might be cited ; but they would be irrelevant to my present purpose. I will only add that a foreigner, describing a nobleman's obsequies which he witnessed at Shrewsbury in the early years of King Charles II, states that the minister made a funeral oration in the chamber where the body lay, and " during the oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of wine, out of which every
- ↑ Arch. Cabbr., N.S., iii, 330, 331.
- ↑ Rev. des Trad. Pop., vi, 485.
- ↑ Temme, Die Volkssagen der Altmark, 77.
- ↑ Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish, 227; Arch. Cambr., 4th S., iii, 332; Gent. Mag. Lib. (Mannerss and Customs), 70; Cymru Fu N. and Q., ii, 271, 275. See also Antigua and the Antiguans, ii, 188.
