Note 349 — Chapter XI · DANCING AS A MOURNING AND BURIAL RITE

The mystic number, seven, in connexion with the rite will not escape notice. The whole service will be found in Gaster’s Daily and Occasional Prayers, vol. I. (1901). The supplications, though not in precisely the same form in which they now appear, are known to go back to pre-Christian times; the antiquity of the ritual by which they are accompanied, especially when its nature is considered, will obviously be at least as great, let alone the long history behind it.