160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ried in hammocks, wear silk, maintain a numerous retinue, with large 

 umbrellas of their own order, flags, trumpets, and other musical instru- 

 ments. But, on their entrance at the royal gate, all these insignia are 

 laid aside." Even in medieval Europe, submission to a conqueror or 

 superior was expressed by this laying aside of such parts of the dress 

 and appendages as were associated with dignity, and the consequent 

 appearance in such relatively-impoverished state as consisted with 

 servitude. Thus, in France, in 1467, the headmen of a conquered 

 town, surrendering to a victorious duke, "brought to his camp with 

 them three hundred of the best citizens iu their shirts, bareheaded, and 

 bare-legged, who presented the keies of the citie to him, and yielded 

 themselves to his mercy." And the doing of feudal homage included 

 observances of kindred meaning. Saint Simon, describing one of the 

 latest instances, and naming among other ceremonies gone through the 

 giving up of sword, gloves, and hat, says that this was done " to strip 

 the vassal of his marks of dignity in presence of his lord." So that, 

 whether it be the putting on of coarse clothing or the putting off of 

 fine clothing and its appendages, the meaning is the same. 



Acts of propitiation of this kind, like those of other kinds, extend 

 themselves from the feared being who is visible to the feared being 

 who is no longer visible the ghost and the god. On remembering 

 that among the Hebrews the putting on sackcloth and ashes went 

 along with cutting off the hair, self-bleeding, and making marks on 

 their bodies all to pacify the ghost; on reading that the habit con- 

 tinues in the East, so that a mourning lady described by Mr. Salt was 

 covered with sackcloth and sprinkled over with ashes, and so that 

 Buckhardt " saw the female relations of a deceased chief running 

 through all the principal streets, their bodies half naked, and the little 

 clothing they had on being rags, while the head, face, and breast," 

 were " almost entirely covered with ashes " it becomes clear that the 

 semi-nakedness, the torn garments, and the coarse garments, express- 

 ing submission to a living superior, serve also to express submission to 

 one who, dying and becoming a ghost, has so acquired a power that is 

 feared. 1 The inference that this is the meaning of the act is verified 



1 Tracing the natural genesis of ceremonies leads us to interpretations of what oth- 

 erwise seem arbitrary differences of custom ; as instance the use of white for mourn- 

 ing in China, and of black farther west. A mourning dress must have coarseness as 

 its essential primitive character: this is implied by the foregoing argument; and for 

 this there is direct as well as inferential evidence. By the Romans, mourning habits 

 were made of a cheap and coarse stuff; and the like was the case with the mourning 

 habits of the Greeks. Now, the sackcloth named in the Bible as used to signify mourn- 

 ing and humiliation was made of hair, which, among pastoral peoples, was the most 

 available material for textile fabrics ; and the hair used being ordinarily mere or less 

 dark in color, the darkness of color incidentally became the most conspicuous character 

 of these coarse fabrics, as distinguished from fabrics made of other materials, lighter, 

 and admitting of being dyed. Relative darkness coming thus to be distinctive of a 

 mourning dress, the contrast was naturally intensified ; and eventually the color became 

 black. Contrariwise in China. Here, with a swarming agricultural population, not rear- 



