In the Swedish ballad of "Little Christina," a lover rises from his
grave, not to carry off his beloved, but simply to console her. One
night Christina hears light fingers tapping at her door; she opens it,
and her dead betrothed comes in. She washes his feet with pure wine,
and for a long while they speak together. Then the cocks begin to
crow, and the dead get them underground. The young girl puts on her
shoes and follows her betrothed through the wide forest. When
they reach the graveyard, the fair hair of the young man begins to
disappear. "See, maiden," he says, "how the moon has reddened all at
once; even so, in a moment, thy beloved will vanish." She sits down on
the tomb and says: "I shall remain here till the Lord calls me." Then
she hears the voice of her betrothed saying to her: "Little Christina,
go back to thy dwelling-place. Every time a tear falls from thine eyes
my shroud is full of blood. Every time thy heart is gay, my shroud is
full of rose leaves."
If the display of excessive grief is thus shown to be only grievous to
the dead, yet they are held to be keenly sensible of a lack of due and
decorous respect. Such respect they generally get from rough or savage
natures, unless it be denied out of intentional scorn or enmity. There
is a factory in England where common men are employed to manipulate
large importations of bones for agricultural uses. Each cargo contains
a certain quantity of bones which are very obviously human. These the
workmen sort out, and when they have got a heap they bury it, and ask
the manager to read over it some passages from the Burial Service.
They do it of their own free will and initiative; were they hindered,
they would very likely leave the works. Shall it be called foolish or
sublime? Another curious instance of respect to the dead comes to my
mind. On board ship two cannon balls are ordinarily sewed up with a
body to sink it. Once a negro died at sea, and his fellows, negroes
also, took him in a boat and rowed a long way to a place where they
were to commit him to the deep. After a while the boat returned to
the ship, still with its burden. The explanation was soon made. The
negroes discovered that they had only one cannon ball, they had rowed
back for the other. One would have been quite enough to answer all
purposes; but it seemed to them disrespectful to their comrade to
cheat him out of half his due.
The dead particularly object to people treading carelessly on their
graves. So we learn from one of the songs of Greek outlawry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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