A coin is often used as a charm against sinister influences[1]. In this case then it may have been a prophylactic against aërial spirits. Why then is it generally put in the dead man's mouth? Not, I think, because the mouth is a convenient purse, as seems to be assumed in the classical interpretation of the custom, but because the mouth is the entrance to the body. The peasants of to-day believe as firmly as men of the Homeric age that it is through the mouth that the soul escapes at death. The phrase [Greek: me tê psychê 'sta dontia], 'with the soul between the teeth,' is the popular equivalent for 'at the last gasp'; and in the folk-songs the same idea constantly recurs; 'open thy mouth,' says Charos to a shepherd whom he has thrown in wrestling, 'open thy mouth that I may take thy soul[2].' Now the passage by which the soul makes its exit, is naturally the passage by which evil spirits (or the soul[3], if it should return,) would make their entrance; and, as we shall see later, there is a very real fear among the peasantry that a dead body may be entered and possessed by an evil spirit. Clearly then the mouth, by which the spirit would enter, is the right place in which to lay the protective coin.
The interpretation which I suggest gains support from some points in modern usage. In Macedonia, according to one traveller[4], the coin which formerly used to be laid in the corpse's mouth was Turkish and bore a text from the Koran, an aggravation of the pagan custom which was made a pretext for episcopal intervention[5]. Now clearly, if the coin had in that district been designed as payment for the services of Charos as ferryman, there would have been no motive for preferring one bearing an inscription from the Mohammedan scriptures, which assuredly could not enhance the coin's value in the eyes of Charos: but if the coin was itself employed as a charm against evil spirits, the sacred text might well have been deemed to add not a little to its prophylactic properties. Thus the character of the particular type of coin chosen indicates that the coin in itself too was at one time viewed as a charm; a charm moreover whose effect would be preciselyetc. p. 269.]
- ↑ See above, p. 13.
- ↑ Passow, no. 432.
- ↑ This is shown later to be the first form of the superstition. See below, pp. 433-4.
- ↑ Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, I. p. 289 (cited by Schmidt, das Volksleben, p. 239).
- ↑ The use of the coin, quite apart from any such variation of the custom, was forbidden by several councils of the Church between the 4th and 7th centuries, cf. [Greek: Politês, Meletê
