Napier adds: "There was an older superstition which gave another explanation for the plate of salt on the breast. There were persons calling themselves 'sin-eaters,' who, when a person died, were sent for to come and eat the sins of the deceased. When they came, their _modus operandi_ was to place a plate of salt and a plate of bread on the breast of the corpse, and repeat a series of incantations, after which they ate the contents of the plates, and so relieved the dead person of such sins as would have kept him hovering around his relations, haunting them with his imperfectly purified spirit, to their great annoyance, and without satisfaction to himself."[186] The basis of this plan of vicarious substitution of personality would seem to be, in the entering of the "sin-eaters" into oneness of life with the deceased through the salt covenant or the blood covenant, in partaking of his body and blood in the bread and salt from his breast. [186] _Folk-Lore_, p. 60. Leland, in his "Etruscan-Roman Remains in Popular Tradition," says that there was, among the Tuscan Romans, an incantation, or an invocation, for every emergency. "If salt upset, they said, 'Dii avertite omen!'"[187] In Sicily, a goddess known as the Mother of the Day "is invoked when salt is spilt."[188] He also cites various incantations and exorcisms, in which salt is an essential factor.[189] [187] _Etruscan-Roman Remains_, p. 12. [188] _Ibid._, p. 148. [189] _Ibid._, pp. 122, 204, 242, 264, 281, 286, 287, 312, 345. A custom prevails in some portions of Pennsylvania, even to this day, of carrying a bag of salt, with a Bible, over the threshold, on entering a new house for the first time. There are families who would not consent to live in a home which had not been thus consecrated.[190] This would seem to be a survival of the passing over the threshold with an offering of blood. A correspondence of this practice with ancient Etruscan customs seems to be indicated by the collections of Leland.[191] Among the Mordvins, a Finnish people on the Volga, salt on bread is placed under the threshold of the bride's paternal home at the time of a marriage covenant.[192] This may be classed with sacrifices or with divination according to our idea of the workings of the primitive Mordvin mind. [190] _Threshold Covenant_, p. 21. [191] _Etruscan-Roman Remains_, p. 306. [192] Ralston's _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 277 f. XI FAITHLESSNESS TO SALT The fact that in its primitive conception a covenant of salt is a permanent and unalterable covenant, naturally suggests to the primitive mind the idea of treachery as faithlessness to salt. The Persian term for a "traitor" is _namak harâm_, "untrue to salt," "one faithless to salt;"[193] and the same idea runs through the languages of the Oriental world. [193] Gesenius's _Thesaurus_, p. 790.