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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1896.
with the mourners. Uncovering on meeting a funeral is usual in most Catholic countries in Europe. And that the origin of the ancovering is sacrificial or religious is supported by the salute being accompanied by a prayer for the soul of the dead. A note from Lincoln (A. D. 1833) throws light on the practice: "It is unlucky to meet a funeral. But if yon take off your hat the evil spirits which hover about the corpse will take it as a compliment and do no harm."5 This is old. But it is warped by the Protestant prejudice that man can do nothing to aid his dead brother; and it misjudges the character of corpse-haunting spirits who seek not honour but a lodging. It seems to follow that in uncovering to a corpse, as in uncovering to any one else in a position of honour, the saluter's object is sacrificial, that is, to temptinto himself some of the spiritgwarm that buzz round the saluted. In Yorkshire, if you see an ominous, that is spirit-haunted, magpie, you should lift your hat and make the sign of cross-thumbs : 58 the lifting the lat seems an offer to take a share of the ill-luck that dogs the magpie; the cross-thumbs, like signing the cross in front of one's face in a Catholic Church, is to prevent the saluter's Evil Eye annoying the saluted. In Tibet, both Chinese and Tibetans take off the hat as a salute. That the Tibetan un-hatting is sacrificial, that is, that its object is to take the ill-luck of the saluted, is in agreement with the Tibet practice of preserving the skull-top entrance from fiend-trespass by wearing abarms between the outer and the inner hat. In crossing the log that marked the entrance to Kana town in Dabomey, the people took off their caps.62 The Mingrelians of the Western Caucasus go bare hended on Saturdays (the Sabbath) in honour of the day 63 When Fiji sailors pass certain parts of the ocean, they quiet their fear by uncovering their head. These places are probably haunted, and the spirits, being offered lodgings in the uncovered heads, let the boat pass in poace. So in Sweden, at the stone where Gunnar's boat sank, fishermen salute by raising their hats; if they failed to salute, they would catch no fish. Though it is specially notable in the case of the hat, the chief guardian and protector, the sacrificial or ceremonial removing of other articles of dress is also a widespread form of salute. Examples of the rule of ceremonial or sacrificial uncovering seem to occur in the African chiefs who are waited on by naked women: in the scanty trace of clothing among the attendants of the chiefs in Indian cave-paintings and sculptures : in the queen of Attengo punishing any of her women who came before her with the upper part of the body covered : and in the bare shoulders of European evening full dress. At Dahomey, the male ministers, in saluting the king, bowed, bared their bodies to the waist, knelt, and made obeisance.
The salute of salutes, whose special virtue secures to it the early and honourable name of Health is the drinking of wine in honour of the saluted. Wine-drinking, as a salute, contains two main luck-elements : one sacrificial, that is, the saluter takes into his wine, and so into himself, the hovering ill-luck of the person salnted; the other sacramental, that is, by drinking the same wine a communion of spirit is secured to the salater and the saluted. This second element is what gives its name to the Loving Cup, that is, to the cup passed round from hand to hand, all present drinking the same wine and through the wine gaining a communion of spirit. Of the scape or sacrificial element, that is, when the drinker takes into himself hovering ill-spirits and ill-lack, Coleridge gives the following example from Cotton's Ode on Winter :
"Men that remote in sorrows live
Shall by our lusty brimmers thrive: We'll drink the wanting into wealth And those that languish into health, The afflicted into joy, th' oppressed
Into security and rest." # Gentleman's Magazine Library, "Popular Superstitions," p. 118.4 Dyer's Polk-Lore, p. 82 69 Schlagintweit's Tibet, p. 171.
61 Op. cit. p. 169. 62 Burton's Mission to Dahomey, Vol. I. p. 281.
es St. James's Budget, 16th June 1888, p. 13. 64 Featherman's Social History, Vol. II. p. 221.
Bassett's Sea Legends, p. 174. " Burton's Mission to Dahomey, Vol. I. p. 260, and Vol. II. p. 43. 61 Table Talk, p. 244.
