shrivelled raisins will be full beauteous grapes, the grain typifies the resurrection, 'that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.'[1]
In the calendar of many a people, differing widely as they may in race and civilization, there are to be found special yearly festivals of the dead. Their rites are much the same as those performed on other days for individuals; their season differs in different districts, but seems to have particular associations with harvest-time and the fall of the year, and with the year's end as reckoned at midwinter or in early spring.[2] The Karens make their annual offerings to the dead in the 'month of shades,' that is, December;[3] the Kocch of North Bengal every year at harvest-home offer fruits and a fowl to deceased parents;[4] the Barea of East Africa celebrate in November the feast of Thiyot, at once a feast of general peace and merry-making, of thanksgiving for the harvest, and of memorial for the deceased, for each of whom a little pot-full of beer is set out two days, to be drunk at last by the survivors;[5] in West Africa we hear of the feast of the dead at the time of yam-harvest;[6] at the end of the year the Haitian negroes take food to the graves for the shades to eat, 'manger zombi,' as they say.[7] The Roman Feralia and Lemuralia were held in February
- ↑ H. C. Romanoff, 'Rites and Customs of Greco-Russian Church,' p. 249; Ralston, 'Songs of the Russian People,' pp. 135, 320; St. Clair and Brophy, 'Bulgaria,' p. 77; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. i. p. 115.
- ↑ Beside the accounts of annual festivals of the dead cited here, see the following: — Santos, 'Ethiopia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 685 (Sept.); Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. pp. 23, 522, 528 (Aug., Oct., Nov.); Rivero and Tschudi, 'Peru,' p. 134 (Peruvian feast dated as Nov. 2 in coincidence with All Souls', but this reckoning is vitiated by confusion of seasons of N. and S. hemisphere, see J. G. Müller, p. 389; moreover, the Peruvian feast may have been originally held at a different date, and transferred, as happened elsewhere, to the Spanish All Souls'); Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. ii. pp. 44, 62 (esp. Apr.); Caron, 'Japan,' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 629 (Aug.).
- ↑ Mason, 'Karens,' l. c. p. 238.
- ↑ Hodgson, 'Abor. of India,' p. 147.
- ↑ Munzinger, 'Ostafr. Stud.' p. 473.
- ↑ Waitz, vol. ii. p. 194.
- ↑ G. D'Alaux in 'Rev. des Deux Mondes,' May 15, 1852, p. 76.
