The meaning probably is, “Lay his head to face the East”; although the other interpretation, “Head directed to East, feet to West,” is possible. At any rate the passage clearly shows that the orientation of graves was assumed by the poet to have been observed, even in the solitudes. A scrap of quaint, but illuminating, evidence comes from the folk-lore of Wales, where the East wind is called “the wind of the dead men’s feet[611].” Nor is the practice of orienting graves confined to Britain. A Scandinavian folk-story makes the grave-diggers, either through stress of bad weather, or “out of mischief,” bury an unpopular person, one Jón Flak, in a grave dug North and South. Every night the dead man haunted the grave-diggers and repeated this verse: “Cold’s the mould at choir-back, Cowers beneath it Jón Flak, Other men lie East and West, Every one but Jón Flak, Every one but Jón Flak.” And no rest was obtained until the body was taken up and buried in the proper position[612]. A study of comparative customs will, however, furnish us with departures from the British plan, although haphazard alinements seem to be exceptional. Thus, some Australian tribes allow the head to front the West, others the East. The Samoans, the Fijians, and the North American Indians place the head to the East; this was also the practice of the Peruvians. Some South American tribes and the old Ainus of Yesso made their dead face the sunrise[613]. Plainly, while all these instances involve alinement of the corpse, they illustrate the two opposing ideas mentioned in the last chapter,--that of darkness and death, connected with sunset, and that of resurrection and new life, typified by sunrise. Sir Thomas Browne, in his _Hydriotaphia_, remarks: “The Persians lay North and South: the Megarians and Phoenicians placed their heads to the East; the Athenians, some think, towards the West, which Christians still retain. And Beda will have it to be the posture of our Saviour[614].”