he set on foot one of those revivals which have so often given the past a new lease of life. The Western Church at large took up the practice, and round it there naturally gathered surviving remnants of the primitive rite of banquets to the dead. The accusation against the early Christians, that they appeased the shades of the dead with feasts like the Gentiles, would not be beside the mark now, fifteen hundred years later. On the eve of All Souls' begins, within the limits of Christendom, a commemoration of the dead which combines some touches of pathetic imagination with relics of savage animism scarcely to be surpassed in Africa or the South Sea Islands. In Italy the day is given to feasting and drinking in honour of the dead, while skulls and skeletons in sugar and paste form appropriate children's toys. In Tyrol, the poor souls released from purgatory fire for the night may come and smear their burns with the melted fat of the 'soul light' on the hearth, or cakes are left for them on the table, and the room is kept warm for their comfort. Even in Paris the souls of the departed come to partake of the food of the living. In Brittany the crowd pours into the churchyard at evening, to kneel bare-headed at the graves of dead kinsfolk, to fill the hollow of the tombstone with holy water, or to pour libations of milk upon it. All night the church bells clang, and sometimes a solemn procession of the clergy goes round to bless the graves. In no household that night is the cloth removed, for the supper must be left for the souls to come and take their part, nor must the fire be put out, where they will come to warm themselves. And at last, as the inmates retire to rest, there is heard at the door a doleful chant — it is the souls, who, borrowing the voices of the parish poor, have come to ask the prayers of the living.[1]
If we ask how the spirits of the dead are in general sup-
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 336. Meiners, vol. i. p. 316; vol. ii. p. 290. Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 216. Cortet, 'Fêtes Religieuses,' p. 233; 'Westminster Rev.' Jan. 1860; Hersart de la Villemarqué, 'Chants de la Bretagne,' vol. ii. p. 307.
