Funeral Kites

Funeral Kites depend for their significance upon a belief in the continuity of life beyond the grave. The oldest funeral rite is, in all probability, that of sacrifice. Human victims, horses, and other domestic animals were slain at the burial place that they might accompany the dead to the land of spirits, and there render him services similar to those they had performed for him on the earth. Classic literature abounds with accounts of such sacrifices, which still survive in the rite of Suttee, where the Hindoo widow throws herself on the burning pyre of her dead husband. The trooper's horse led at the funeral is a survival from the time when the horse was slain at the tomb of its master. An instance where the steed was shot and buried on the coffin occurred at Treves in 1781; and Longfellow's Burial of the Minnesinh made English readers acquainted with the existence of this rite among the Red Indians. Arms, implements, and domestic utensils .were often buried with the dead, and have been found time after time when barrows have been opened. Ezekiel (xxxii. 27) knew the practice as existingamong surrounding nations, though it was not common among the Semites. The custom of the Greeks, who put into the hand of the dead an obolus wherewith to pay the ghostly ferryman, is kept up by the German and Irish peasantry, who deposit a coin in the coffin. It is probable that the casting of earth upon the coffin is a survival from the days of cairnburial, when every relative and friend added his stone to the heap. The distinctly Christian rites consist of religious services, which vary somewhat in different Churches. The passing-bell is no longer believed to drive away demons lying in wait for the parting soul, and the practice of watching by the corpse has degenerated into the wake, now rapidly becoming obsolete.