Cylchgronau Cymru

268 BYE-GONES. Mar. 2, 1892. Wales,previously to a f uneral,it was customary when the corpse was brought out of the house, for the next of kin (a female) to give over the coffin a quantity of white loaves, and sometimes a cheese with a piece of money stuck in it, to certain poor people. After that theypresented inlike manner a cup of drink,and required the person to drink a little of it immediately; then the minister repeated the Lord's prayer, after which they proceeded with the corpse. To this hour, Pennant adds, the bier is carried by the next of kin, a custom considered as the highest respect that filial piety can pay to the deceased. It is not at all un¬ common, as folk-lore students are aware, for tribal, communal, and other feasts in the last stage of their decadence to come to be represented by gifts of food to the poor. The significance of the custom as related by Pennant is that the food and drink are given across the coffin by the next of kin, and that if the recipients are not required to eat the bread on the spot thev have at least to drink of the liquor offered them. Mr Hartland cited many variants of this custom in this and other countries. When these traditional observances are set side by side, their meaning, he observed, is transparent. The par¬ taking of food and drink which have been placed upon or near the body or the coffin of the deceased, or are delivered over the coffin to be consumed—an act, in the most elaborate of these rites, distinctly believed to convey to the persons who partake some, at all events, of the properties of the dead—can only be a relic of a savage feast where the meat consumed was the very body of the deceased kinsman. The eating of the dead, however repulsive to us, is known by the testimony of ancient writers to have been the practice of many barbarous tribes, and travellers have found it among modern savages. In particular Strabo records it of the ancient Irish. The inference that the cannibalism related of them was once com¬ mon to those peoples among whom similar modern practices, like those of the Sin-Eater, &c, have been found, is well within the limits of induc¬ tion. The reason for the custom is doubt¬ less to be found in the belief that the qualities of the food are communicated to the eater. The same reason which induces the wild South American warrior to love the flesh of tigers, &c, because from it courage passes into those who eat thereof, leads the Bavarian peasant to re¬ tain within the kindred the good qualities of a departed member by means of the symbolical act of eating " corpse-cakes." In the Sin-Eater the same act is put to another, but strictly analogous, use in the absorption of the sins of the dead. Why it was supposed that in the one case good and in the other evil properties were communicated we do not know. Some variation in the view taken of the matter by the clergy may have led to the rite being considered disgraceful in Wales, and so may have rendered those who persisted in it the objects of persecution. Payment to undertake the odium, the consequent degradation as well of the rite as of the person who performed it, and the influence of the Biblical account of the Hebrew Scapegoat.may have done the rest. The gifts of food to the poor, both in their immediate form described by Pennant, and in their final form as doles, however, point to a differ¬ ent interpretation of the same original observance. They can hardly be derived from the Sin-Eater; their relation to it is not lineal but collateral. They are variants of the ceremony, and variants bearing the strongest testimony to the form and meaning of the parent type.—Mr Hartland's paper was most cordially received by the company, but various points were more or less criticised by the members of both Societies. The theory set forth is undoubtedly an ingenious one, but it requires further proofs to make it altogether acceptable. So far as Wales is concerned there existed up to a very recent period some very curious funeral customs, the recital of which might throw further light on the custom of the Sin-Eater. We would suggest that persons cognisant of the customs referred to should forward their information either direct to Mr Sydney Hartland, at Barnwood Court, Gloucester (who we are sure will make thebestpossible use of all bits of Welsh Folk-Lore sent to him), or contribute it to the congenial columns of Bye-Gones for the edification and enlightenment of the public. MARCH 2, 1892. NOTES. THE ABBOT AND CONVENT OF BILDE- WAS (BUILDWAS) AND THE FOREST OF SALOP.—The abbot and convent of Build was obtained a licence, in pursuance of an inquisition a. q. d. (an inquiry to ascertain if the concession would damage any person) taken by John Fitz- Hugh, keeper of the King's Forest of Salop, to assart 60 acres of their own land within the said forest, to enclose and cultivate it, and to hold it to them and their successors for ever, provided they gave ingress and egress to the King's beasts thereinto and thereout.—Patent anno 5 Edw. L, granted at the Camp near Basingwerk 22nd August : m 8 d. (ced. 2) 13. Z. GRANT OF THE LATE MONASTERY OF CONWAY.—The Patent Roll 5th Elizabeth, Pt. 7, m. 13, contains the Grant, dated 1563, To Elezeus Wynne, of " the house and site of the late Monastery of Conway," and all messuages, in the Vill of Maynan, &c. A house called Maenan Abbey stands near the banks of the Conway, about three miles below Llanrwst. It is in this Grant that reference is made to Comortha, Auregia, and Xenia, as to which some correspon¬ dence is going on in this column. The following is an abstract of the Grant:— The Queen to all to whom,&c. Greeting. Whereas our very dear brother Edward the Sixth by his Letters Patent dated the twentieth of February in the sixth year of Edward the Sixth leased granted and let to farm to a certain Hugh Pylston among other things All that house ana site of the late Monastery of Conway within the Bishopric of St. Asaph by authority of Parliament then suppressed and dissolved Together with all houses, buddings, barns, stables, gardens, orchards, lands, and the soil within the site and precinct of the same Monastery, and two meadows lying next them, and the pasture there called le Warles, and ono grain mill next the