Note 5 — Chapter V · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.)

Here we have quite the Etruscan idea of providing against after-death needs with appliances connected with the mortal state. Dennis (Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, vol. i. p. 34) mentions more material traces of Etruscan beliefs at Matrei, on the north side of the Brenner. Somewhat further south more important remains still have of late years been unearthed, as we shall have occasion to note by-and-by.

The story in the text, in its depiction of self-devotion, has much analogy with a Chinese legend told to me by Dr. Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, concerning a man who sacrifices his own life in order to put himself on fighting terms with a cruel spirit which torments that of his dead companion. In its details it is like the story I have pointed out in Folklore of Rome (the ‘Tale of the Pilgrim Husband,’ pp. 361–3 and xvii), as the most devious from Christian teaching of any of the legends I have met with in Rome; and it is particularly noteworthy in connexion with Mr. Isaac Taylor’s summary of the Etruscan creed (Etruscan Researches, p. 270). ‘The Turanian creed was Animistic. The gods needed no gifts, but the wants of the ancestral spirits had to be supplied: the spirits of the departed were served in the ghost-world by the spirits of the utensils and ornaments which they had used in life.’) And in effect we find in every collection of the contents preserved at the opening of Etruscan tombs, not only gems and jewellery and household utensils, but remains also of every kind of food.