SC - Abso-Floggin'-Lutely OT - Re: Funeral Feasts

[Philip & Susan Troy]

CorwynWdwd at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Interesting belief. Kind of like a comparison I made yesterday with a client,
> she said that I must believe in the old superstition that you have to leave
> the same way you come in or you're inviting death in... I'd never heard of
> this, but HAD heard that if a bird gets indoors it had to leave the same way,
> or you invite death.
> 
> I guess death, being the great dreaded mystery, comes when it will, and we
> try to find the meaning.
> 
> Corwyn

This is fascinating stuff! Both of these (i.e. the above and the
tradition Ras mentions about not inviting Death to enter the home) are
part of a huge European (and non-European) body of apotropaics connected
with death that has culminated in some cultures in a belief in vampires
and similar bugaboos. The thing I find odd is that while many, many
people seem to have such traditions (I won't use the "s" word but it
would be perfectly appropriate here), very few of such cultures would
today profess a belief in vampires or related folkloric phenomena.
Rather, many'd say such stuff was, well, outdated superstition. Not that
a superstition is by definition a bad thing or even untrue.

I just find it interesting that beliefs that, for example, if a black
cat were to leap over the casket of the deceased at the vigil or wake,
the deceased is destined to be a revenant or some type of harmful ghost,
aren't so far removed from our own cultures as we might like to admit.
There have been cases of what we might call mass hysteria connected with
vampires as recently as WWI-era New England, and the Kashube people,
originally of Poland but now largely living in Ontario, Canada, still
practice various apotropaic charms as part of their funerary customs today.

Whether or not those funerary customs include tuna-noodle casserole,
though, is as yet undetermined. ;  )
   
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================