But generally funereal customs are very significant of the fear that
spirits may return, and their dirges more in the vein of the Bodo
of North-East India: 'Take and eat: heretofore you have eaten and
drunk with us, you can do so no more: you were one of us, you can be
so no longer: we come no more to you, come you not to us.' 'Even,'
says Mr. Tylor, 'in the lowest culture we find flesh holding its own
against spirit, and at higher stages the householder rids himself with
little scruple of an unwelcome inmate. The Greenlanders would carry
the dead out by the window, not by the door, while an old woman,
waving a firebrand behind, cried 'Piklerrukpok!' i.e., 'There is
nothing more to be had here!' the Hottentots removed the dead from the
hut by an opening broken out on purpose, to prevent him from finding
the way back; the Siamese, with the same intention, break an opening
through the house wall to carry the coffin through, and then hurry it
at full speed thrice round the house; the Siberian Chuwashes fling a
red-hot stone after the corpse is carried out, for an obstacle to bar
the soul from coming back; so Brandenburg peasants pour out a pail of
water at the door after the coffin to prevent the ghost from walking;
and Pomeranian mourners returning from the churchyard leave behind
the straw from the hearse, that the wandering soul may rest there,
and not come back so far as home.' [28]
It may be remarked, in this connection, that in nearly all the pictures
of demons and devils, they are represented as very lean. The exceptions
will be found generally in certain Southern and tropical demons which
represent cloud or storm--Typhon, for instance--and present a swollen
or bloated appearance. No Northern devil is fat. Shakespeare ascribes
to Cæsar a suspicion of leanness--
Yond' Cassius hath a lean and hungry look:
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
When Antony defends Cassius, Cæsar only replies, 'Would he were
fatter!' This mistrust of leanness is a reflection from all the
Hunger-demons; it interprets the old sayings that a devil, however
fair in front, may be detected by hollowness of the back, and that
he is usually so thin as to cast no shadow. [29]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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