Surveying the general question of suicide, one or two intermediate stages of folk-custom may be noted. In the early days of English history, suicides and murderers were buried at crossroads. It has been argued that this procedure was not altogether intended to heap indignity on the corpse, but that the intersecting roads were emblematic of the Cross, for which reason such spots were therefore deemed self-consecrated[926]. That this idea was prevalent two or three hundred years ago, one would not care to deny; nevertheless it was a late accretion. Else, why was a stake driven through the body of the person so interred? Dishonour to the dead may not, indeed, have been the primary motive which impelled the survivors to behave in this manner, although a desire to prevent the ghost walking was doubtless a strong constituent[927]. The living would naturally object to the burial of a criminal or murderer near an inhabited house[928]; the ghost, angry at being disembodied, according to the elementary notions of our forefathers, might walk abroad, and wreak vengeance or disaster on whomsoever it would. This fear was common among priscan folk, and is widespread even at the present day. Professor Frazer has shown how the natives of Uganda bury still-born babes, and children born feet foremost, at cross-roads. Women, passing by, throw dust or grass on the mound to prevent the spirit entering themselves and being reborn. The bodies of suicides are also burned at cross-roads. Westermarck has collected and collated many analogous practices and beliefs from such far-sundered countries as India and Servia, Japan and Morocco[929]. If, following this high authority, we are disposed to agree that the crossways were believed to disperse such energy as might be ascribed to the deceased person[930], that this mode of interment diverted diseases, and warded off all evil influences from the living, we shall the more readily perceive why the superstition retained its vitality in later times. When the Cross became the symbol of the new religion, the old belief about suicides was reinforced so far as the idea of protection was concerned, though the superstition might be weakened in respect of any supposed indignity to the dead. Even here, however, there is room for further investigation, and writers like Mr Andrew Lang have questioned whether the supposed efficacy of the Cross is a sufficient explanation[931]. The idea of abandonment, as it appears to the present writer, must have been an essential portion of the ceremony, and this was the natural consequence of the theory that the soul of the suicide was self-doomed to perish.