CEMETERY AT FEILFORD. 589 



been interred at the same time, as after a battle bodies are buried 

 one above another in trenches. The funeral feast, and the visit to 

 the burial-place of a beloved relative, will account sufficiently for 

 the presence of the teeth and bones of the domestic ruminants, and 

 the pig, in these graves. In the Romano-British cemetery at 

 Helmingham in Suffolk, which I had an opportunity of examining 

 through the kindness of the Rev. George Cardew, relics of this 

 kind were more abundant than I have found them to be in the 

 Frilford cemetery. Oyster-shells were found in considerable abund- 

 ance in both these cemeteries, as the other indications of Roman 

 occupation would have led us, a 'priori^ to expect. I may perhaps 

 here say, that it does not seem clear to me that any great proba- 

 bility attaches to an argument for. the heathen character of an 

 interment from the discovery there of such evidences of a funeral 

 feast as the bones of domestic animals. The instinct so beautifully 

 alluded to by Wordsworth, in his well-known poem ^ We are Seven,' 

 has in itself nothing repugnant to the spirit of Christianity, though 

 the actual practice at the grave-side may and often did degenerate 

 from that of the ' little Cottage Girl ' 



* Who took her little porringer 

 And ate her supper there.' 



Scandal arose out of the abuse of the funeral feast ; but, inas- 

 much as the Church in all ages has acquiesced in the retention by 

 newly-made converts of customs which, though heathen in origin, 

 may not have been intrinsically immoral, it is easy to understand 

 how a custom intrinsically laudable may have been tolerated when 

 kept within due limits. As to the actual practice being rife 

 amongst Christians^ the numerous denunciations and inhibitions 

 issued relating to it afford very abundant evidence. 



^ The following passages may be cited in addition to those so often referred to from 

 the • Capitularies ' of Charlemagne. In the collection of the Canons of the Greek 

 Synods, by Martin, Bishop of Braga in Portugal, who died in 580, we find the follow- 

 ing words, * Non oportet, non liceat Christian is prandia ad defunctorum sepulchra 

 deferre et sacrificari mortuis.' See the ' Corpus Juris Canonici,' where the passage is 

 adopted as the text of Decretum Gratiani, De Consecr. dist. i. cap. 29, § 2, under the 

 title 'Ex Concilio Martini Papae.' Hardouin, ' Acta Conciliorum,' &c. 1611, iii. 390, 

 has printed Martin of Braga's Collection, and, according to the margin of his edition, 

 this particular canon comes from the third Council of Aries, and not from a Greek 

 source. See also Gretzer, * De Funere Christiano,' to which work I owe the foregoing 

 quotation, lib. iii. pp. 159, 164, 166, ed. 161 1, where Ambrose, Augustine, Cyprian, 

 Gaudentius, and Faustus the Manichee, may all be found deposing to the fact of tlie 



