particular interest could attach to it. I obtained further particulars about it from the local peasant people.
The custom is this. There is a well-kept shrine of Santa Maria delle Grazie at the cross road near the Hotel des Temples, where the road to San Biagio (a church built on the site of an ancient temple) and the modern Campo Santo branches off from the ancient road to the Porta Aurea and the temples. Here on the 2nd Sunday in September a festival is held, and the unique feature of this festival is the slaughtering, roasting, and eating of swine before the shrine. A mass is sung at the shrine on the morning of the festival, but the procession takes place in the early afternoon, and the feasting in the afternoon and evening. The procession, consisting of processional cross, children dressed in white, garlanded with roses, and the animals for slaughter, is formed outside the church of St. Nicola, about a quarter of a mile away. I found from inquiries that the killing and eating of animals before the shrines at festivals is not an uncommon custom in parts of Sicily, but the animals are almost always only lambs and kids. Swine, however, are used as well as other animals at Porto Empedocle, four miles from Girgenti, at the Feast of the Assumption, August 15th. I could hear of no other place where swine only were used in the feast.
5th March, 1899.
Burial Customs.
You may be interested to know that some years ago, when digging a grave in Bucklebury churchyard, an old grave was disturbed and two bottles of beer unearthed. They had been buried according to a custom with the body of a person who was given to drink, and in order to give him a fair start in the land to which he had journeyed. I myself saw one of the bottles, the other being broken.
Newbury District Field Club.
