placed in the mouth was the toll for Charon, save at Hermione in Argolis, where men thought there was a short descent to Hades, and therefore provided the dead with no coin for the grim ferryman. How such ideas could be realized, may be seen in the story of Eukrates, whose dead wife appeared to him to demand one of her golden sandals, which had been dropped underneath the chest, and so not burnt for her with the rest of her wardrobe; or in the story of Periander, whose dead wife Melissa refused to give him an oracular response, for she was shivering and naked, because the garments buried with her had not been burnt, and so were of no use, wherefore Periander plundered the Corinthian women of their best clothes, which he burned in a great trench with prayer, and now obtained his answer.[1] The ancient Gauls were led, by their belief in another life, to burn and bury with the dead things suited to the living; nor is the record improbable that they transferred to the world below the repayment of loans, for even in modern centuries the Japanese would borrow money in this life, to be repaid with heavy interest in the next.[2] The souls of the Norse dead took with them from their earthly home servants and horses, boats and ferry-money, clothes and weapons. Thus, in death as in life, they journeyed, following the long dark 'hell-way' (helvegr). The 'hell-shoon' (helskô) were bound upon the dead man's feet for the toilsome journey; and when King Harald was slain in the battle of Bravalla, they drove his war-chariot, with the corpse upon it into the great burial-mound, and there they killed the horse, and King Hring gave his own saddle beside, that the fallen chief might ride or drive to Walhalla, as it pleased him.[3] Lastly, in the Lithuanian and old Prussian district, where Aryan heathendom held its place in Europe so firmly and so
- ↑ Lucian. De Luctu, 9, &c.; Philopseudes, 27; Strabo, viii. 6, 12; Herodot. v. 92; Smith's 'Dic. Gr. and Rom. Ant.' art. ' funus.'
- ↑ Valer. Max. ii.; Mela, iii. 2. Froius (1565) in Maffei, 'Histor. Indicarum,' lib. iv. 3
- ↑ Grimm, ' Verbrennen der Leichen,' pp. 232, &c., 247, &c.; ' Deutsche Digitized by Microsoft Myth.' pp. 795-800.
