and May.[1] In the last five or ten days of their year the Zoroastrians hold their feasts for departed relatives, when souls come back to the world to visit the living, and receive from them offerings of food and clothing.[2] The custom of setting empty seats at the St. John's Eve feast, for the departed souls of kinsfolk, is said to have lasted on in Europe to the seventeenth century. Spring is the season of the time-honoured Slavonic rite of laying food on the graves of the dead. The Bulgarians hold a feast in the cemetery on Palm Sunday, and, after much eating and drinking, leave the remains upon the graves of their friends, who, they are persuaded, will eat them during the night. In Russia such scenes may still be watched on the two appointed days called Parents' Days. The higher classes have let the rite sink to prayer at the graves of lost relatives, and giving alms to the beggars who flock to the cemeteries. But the people still 'howl' for the dead, and set out on their graves a handkerchief for a tablecloth, with gingerbread, eggs, curd-tarts, and even vodka, on it; when the weeping is over, they eat up the food, especially commemorating the dead in Russian manner by partaking of his favourite dainty, and if he were fond of a glass, the vodka is sipped with the ejaculation, 'The Kingdom of Heaven be his! He loved a drink, the deceased!'[3] When Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, at the end of the tenth century, instituted the celebration of All Souls' Day (November 2),[4]
- ↑ Ovid. Fast. ii. 533; v. 420.
- ↑ Spiegel, 'Avesta,' vol. ii. p. ci.; Alger, p. 137.
- ↑ Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' pp. 374, 408; St. Clair and Brophy, 'Bulgaria,' p. 77; Romanoff, 'Greco-Roman Church,' p. 255.
- ↑ Petrus Damianus, 'Vita S. Odilonis,' in the Bollandist 'Acta Sanctorum,' Jan. 1, has the quaint legend attached to the new ordinance. An island hermit dwelt near a volcano, where souls of the wicked were tormented in the flames. The holy man heard the officiating demons lament that their daily task of new torture was interfered with by the prayers and alms of devout persons leagued against them to save souls, and especially they complained of the Monks of Cluny. Thereupon the hermit sent a message to Abbot Odilo, who carried out the work to the efficacy of which he had received such perfect spiritual testimony, by decreeing that November 2, the day after All Saints', should be set apart for services for the departed.
