When we see the sword laid over the coffin, and the horse led in procession to the grave, we witness the survival of one of the oldest ceremonies ever performed among men—the difference being, that of old the weapon was laid in the grave beside the hand that had wielded it, and the horse was slaughtered to accompany his master to the unseen world.[7] Some forms of this survival gradually passed into distinctively Christian usages[8] with a definitely Christian significance, and others became actually incorporated in the ritual of the Church. One of the most striking of the sepulchral customs of the Pagan Northmen was that of binding the “hell-shoes” on the feet of the dead. It is stated in the Saga of Gisli the Outlaw that when they were laying Vestein in his grave-mound, Thorgrim the priest went up to the mound and said, “’Tis the custom to bind the hell-shoes on men so that they may walk on them to Valhalla, and I will now do that by Vestein;" and when he had done it he said, “I know nothing about binding on hell-shoon, if these loosen.” This custom is often found in Christian as well as in pre-Christian graves in Central Europe. It was well known to the liturgical writers of the Middle Ages. Durandus says: “The dead must also have shoes on their feet by which they may show that they are ready for the judgment.” Members of religious orders were usually thus buried, but the custom was not confined to them alone.[9] The idea of providing for a journey which was implied in the Northern custom of the “hell-shoon,” is curiously illustrated by the statement of Weinhold, that in some remote districts of Sweden, up to a very recent period, the tobacco-pipe, the pocket-knife, and the filled brandy-flask, were placed with the dead in the grave. ----- Footnote 2: There are records of occasional cases in which the converts rebelled and went back to their old customs in spite of the efforts of the clergy to restrain them. Thus we find in A.D. 1249, that in Livonia, where heathenism lingered longer than in almost any other part of Europe, there is a solemn deed of contract entered into between the converts and the brethren of the Holy Cross, by which the converts become bound, for themselves and their heirs, never again to burn their dead or to bury with them horses or slaves, or arms or vestments, or any other things of value, but to bury their dead in the cemeteries attached to the churches.—Dreger, _Codex Diplomaticus Pomeraniæ_. Again we find that the Esthonian converts rebelled in 1225, took back the wives they had given up, exhumed the dead they had buried in the Christian cemeteries, and burned them, after the fashion of the old Pagan times.—Gruber, _Origines Livoniæ_, cited by Wyllie in _Archæologia_, vol. xxxvii. p. 46. Footnote 3: Si quis corpus defuncti hominis secundum ritum paganorum flamma consumi fecerit, et ossa ejus ad cinerem redierit, capite punietur.—_Capitulary_, A.D. 785. Footnote 4: