24 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



present day funeral customs in use in many parts of Europe point, in 

 survivals, to the widespread recognition by primitive man of the 

 importance of providing for such cases. Mr. Frazer cites, amongst 

 others, the foUowing instances : — In modern Greece, when a man 

 dies abroad, a puppet is made in his likeness, and dressed in his^ 

 clothes, and mourning is made over it; it is not stated that the 

 puppet is buried. In Albania, when a man dies abroad, all the usual 

 lamentations are made at home, as if the body were present; the 

 funeral procession goes to the church, but, in the place of the bier, a 

 boy walks, carrying a dish on which a cracknel is placed over some 

 boiled wheat. This dish is set in the middle of the church, and the 

 funeral service is held over it ; it is not, however, buried, but the 

 women go and weep at the grave of the relation who died last.^ 



Dr. C. R. Browne, m.e.i.a., informs me that in the islands of Aran 

 and in Innisboffin the usual wake is held in the case of a drowned, 

 person whose body has not been recovered. Wakes are likewise held 

 on receipt of the news of a death abroad. 



Information as to the manner in which primitive peoples provide 

 for the case of a missing body is scanty, apparently because it has not 

 been looked for, but the examples given are sufficient for our purpose. 



They enable us to understand the essential meaning of the ceno- 

 taph to the Greeks and the Romans, which has been obscured by the 

 modem association of the idea of memorial, and render available the 

 large body of evidence which may be gathered from classical writers.^ 



The primitive thcoiy of the relation of the soul, or ghost, to the 

 body is at the bottom of the burial customs of the Greeks and the 

 Romans. The same range of ideas, which we find in primitive man, 

 are clearly present. 



The importance attached by the Greeks and the Romans to burial 

 need not be insisted on. The ghost of the unburied might not enter 

 Hades, but must perforce wander till burial was given to the body. 



Thus, in the Iliad, Patroclus reproaches Achilles for neglecting to 

 give him burial: — "Bury me with all speed, that I pass the gates 

 of Hades. Far off the spirits banish me, the phantoms of men out- 

 worn, nor suffer me to mingle with them beyond the river, but vainly 

 I wander along the wide-gated dwelling of Hades " (xxiii., 71). The 

 description of the unburied dead, and the appeal of Palinurus to ^neas 

 in the ^neid, may be also instanced (vi., 295-415). 



1 Frazer, I. c, p. 96. 



- Cenotaphs are treated as memorial in Smith's and in Seyffert's (ed. by 

 Nettleship and Sandys) Dictionaries of Classical Antiquities. 



