Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/212

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178
Village Life in Korea.

sizes; and as they are whirled and twirled by the bearers, they throw a variegated light over the entire scene which makes one think of the land of shades.

Many in the procession are neither relatives nor friends, but are bent on having a good time and drinking all the free wine they want. Often the men that carry the bier are so full of bad wine that they can hardly walk, and so swing from side to side as they go. These bearers and the mourners keep up a sort of wail that cannot be described, but will never be forgotten if once heard. It can be easily heard for a half mile, and nothing more weird in the way of a noise can well be imagined. It was only this morning, between one and two o'clock, that I was awakened by these weird cries as they passed out into the hills beyond the town. I recall now almost with a shiver the creepy feeling that I had the first time I was awakened out of sleep by this sort of wailing. It was when I had not been long in the country, and I was away out in a village all alone, so far as my own race was concerned. Sometime near the middle of the night I was aroused by these unspeakable cries from a procession in the distance. At first I did not know what they meant, but was not long in deciding. The mourners were walking rapidly, and the cries came nearer and nearer, till they passed through the village and on into the blackness of the night, where the sound of the wailing was lost in the distance.

The grave site will be decided by a geomancer, who is called for this purpose and who claims to be able to locate the most lucky sites; and on the selection of