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November, 1895.)
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
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the inscription to the Divine Manes on the tombstone, was in the main the contiuuance of the existing worship of the dead.18 More than any part of the feast, drinking housed the dead or lightened his evils by drawing them into the drinker.10 This explains St. Augustine's (A. D. 398) saying :-"Many drink most luxuriously over the dead, and, when they make a feast for the departed, place their gluttony and drunkenness to the score of religion."20 St. Chrysostoni A. D. (350) also admits the religious element in ceremonial drunkenness :-"You will prosper in the new year, not if you make yourself drank on the new moon, but if you do what God approves."21 In the sixth century, in England, men spent Christmas and other sacred days in drunkenness and scurrility, both practices doubtless ceremonial.22 It must have been with a ceremonial or housing object that, in A. D. 536, a bishop in Asia Minor made drunk persons who came to him for Baptism.33
The religious, that is, the self-saorifloing or soape, element in drunkenness is shown by the case of the Russian peasant, who at times thinks it a duty to the church and to the memory of the dead to get drunk,24 Scotland, like Russia, long clung to the early belief in the sacramental character of funeral drinking. “I don't object so much," says the minister to the old Galloway farmer, " to your taking too much at a wedding. But to get drunk at a funeral is without excuse. You must give up whisky at funerals." "Hoot, Meenister, stap whaskey at funerals, Wad you have us burry oor deid with the burrial of a doag ?" At a Japan wedding the drinking of rice beer is one of the chief rites.25 In Japan, before the victim criminal is executed, he is given a cup of rice beer.26 The Japanese offering at the yearly god-feast includes a cup of rice beer or saki.27 In every Buddhist monastery in Tibet, within the outer gateway, the image of the place-spirit is worshipped with wine38 The Lamas of Tibet also pour liquor to evil spirits.29 Among the Greeks, on the Ninth or Earthen Pot-day, at Eleusis, two vessels of wine were upset as an offering to the infernal divinities.30 In Egypt, in the second century after Christ, in the processions of Isis, a large wine jar was carried. The people of Nicaragua, in Central America, had twenty-one festal days dedicated to the gods. These were spent in drinking.32 On certain high days the chief priest of the Zapotecs of South Mexico became drank,33 In Mexico, every religious ceremony ended in general intoxication.34 The Mexicans drank together in closing an agreement.35 The present Mexicans hang liquor outside of their hovels to keep the bees from leaving 36 This practice is in agrecment with the widespread belief that, when bees become unsettled, it is because they get spiritpossessed. Among the Peruvians, after marriage, the husband and wifo fasted for two days, drank chicha together, and the bridegroom put a shoe on the bride's foot,37 An invitation to drink was the usual salutation among Peruvian friends.88 The Peruvians threw liquor into channels and rivers to bring rain.39 With the same object they set a black sheep in a field, poured liquor over it, and gave it nothing to eat till rain fell.co The sense seems to be the drought demon went into the liquor and into the sheep, and so the rain was able to fall. The liquor drunk in the Osianic feasts of shells (A. D. 400-800) was a juice extractod from the birch tree and fermented. A liquor was also made of heather. When, at Lammas.
18 Dean Merivale notices that the first Christians at Rome did not separate thoninelves from those who kupt to the older faith. They married with non-Christians, they continued the use of the oll Romau law, they burnt their dead in Roman fashion, gathered the ashes into urns, and inscribed tho usunl dedication to the Divine Spirits Quoted in Smith's Christian Antiquiting, pp. 308, 309.
19 Compare Smith's Christian Antiquitior, p. 1.136. 90 Qnoted in Smith's Christian Antiquities, p. 312. 21 Sunith's Christian Antiquities, p. 812.
72 Oompare Sunith's Christian Antiquities, p. 588. 20 Op.cit. p. 583.
26 Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales, Vol. I. p. :30. 25 Japanese Janners, p. 182.
** Japanese Manners,p. 226. 17 Japanese Manners, p. 61. * Waddell's Buldhim in Tibet, p. 372
29 Op. cit. p. 225. 30 Brown's The Great Dionysiak Myth, Vol. I. p. 319. 31 King's Antique Gems, p. 367. 31 Descriptive Sociology, pp. 2, 23.
35 The Col.lon Bough, Vol. I. p. 114. Descriptive Sociology. pp. 2, 21.
35 Descriptive Sociology, Vol. II. p. 33. » Harper's Nero Monthly Magazine, March 1836.
27 Descriptive Sociology, 2, "Ancient Peru." * Descriptive Sociology, pp. 2, 33.
► Descriptive Sociology, 2, "Ancient Peru." 40 The Golden Bough, Vol. I. p. 17.
1 Smith's Galic Antiquities, p. 154.
