Note 289.1 — Chapter XIII · FUNERAL RITES.

The ritual eating of special food is used at funerals in many countries. Pulse is not mentioned as an ingredient of the Kólyva cakes. It was, however, an important part of the funeral feasts of the Romans; and Mr. F. B. Jevons, commenting on Plutarch, has quoted Porphyry’s statement, that Pythagoras bade his followers “abstain from beans as from human flesh,” and the reason mentioned by Pliny as entertained by some for the prohibition, namely, that the souls of the dead are in them.289.1 The various taboos and other superstitions connected with beans point to the correctness of this reason, and tend to show that pulse was in some way identified with human flesh. In the French provinces of Berry and the Marche, a plate of beans, or of dried peas, always figures among the provisions of the funeral banquet.289.2 In the Marches of Italy the family on returning from the burial-ground sit down together to a large plate of beans.289.3 In some parts of Friuli a soup of beans is distributed; in other places cakes of barley, or grated cheese. Elsewhere a loaf or cake of pan di tremeste, composed of rye and vetch, is given, with wine or brandy, to all who come to chant the rosary and other prayers over the corpse on the evening of death.289.4 In the neighbourhood of Rimini the feast consists of a broth of chick-pease.290.1 But the form assumed by the ritual food is usually either cakes or fermented liquor, frequently both. Cakes called wastê are eaten in the Ardennes.290.2 In Wales it seems that a hot plum-cake fresh from the oven used to be handed round to the guests, broken in pieces, not cut with a knife. In Sardinia, on the seventh or ninth day after death, savoury cakes are prepared and sent hot from the oven to all the relatives and neighbours, and to all who have joined in the weeping for the dead, or accompanied the corpse to the tomb. The family then gathers at supper, celebrating the virtues of the deceased between the mouthfuls of food and their tears.290.3 Dough-nuts, among the Turks, are sent to friends and to the poor on the third, seventh, and fortieth days after the funeral; and prayers for the soul are requested in return.290.4 Bread carried in the funeral procession is distributed to the poor by the Tamil population of Ceylon.290.5 On one of the Banks’ Islands, “when a great man dies, the people from all the villages around bring mashed yams the next morning to the place where the dead man lies and eat them there.”290.6 Among the Abyssinians the poor receive from the banquet pieces of bread and of the entrails and liver of the animals which are served up.290.7 The Tcheremiss of the Kama and the Volga provide small pancakes, which they eat as soon as the grave is filled up, every one depositing three morsels upon the grave, saying: “This is for thee.”291.1