THE WAKE. 



23 



Their abuse is never worse than when lavished 

 by a creditor upon a defunct debtor. 



The idea underlying this custom is probably 

 that which suggested the Irish wake — a test if 

 the clay be really inanimate. Nor would I de- 

 spise, especially during prevalence of plague or 

 yellow fever, in lands where you are interred off- 

 hand, any precaution, however barbarous, against 

 the horrors and the shudders of burying alive. 

 Certain Madras Hindoos, after filling its mouth 

 with milk and rapping its face with a shankh or 

 conch-shell, grossly insult, as only the c mild 

 Hindu ' of Bishop Heber can, all its feminine 

 relatives. The practice is also found in the New 

 World. The Aruacas (Arrawaks) of Guiana 

 opened the eyes of the corpse, and switched them 

 with thorns ; smeared the cheeks and lips with 

 lard, and applied alternately sweet and bitter 

 words. This was a curious contrast to the cus- 

 toms of the Brazilian Tupys and the Bolivian 

 Moxos, who, according to Yves d'Evreux and 

 Alcide d'Orbigny, met every morning to bewail 

 their losses, even of their grandfathers and great- 

 grandfathers ! 



As darkness came on we saw the sands spark- 

 ling with lights, here stationary like glow-worms 

 or the corpusant ; there flitting about like ignes 



