We have now surveyed, however inadequately, our modes of burial, the forms of the graves, the gifts deposited with the dead, and funeral feasts, and incidentally we have noticed a number of superstitions. We may fittingly terminate the discussion by glancing at the closing ceremony of a modern funeral--the placing of flowers on the grave. The practice has its aesthetic as well as its religious side, and represents the refinement of ideas which are really very ancient. Even in the time of Durandus, the funeral evergreens were deemed to be symbolical only[831]. The rite of strewing graves with flowers was symbolical, too, among the Romans. Yet this kindly ceremony belongs, in the first place, to the pre-Christian age[832], and we are bound to believe that the original objects scattered over the dead were neither evergreens nor flowers. Perhaps these prototypes were the flints and shards of which we have spoken. These “forgotten things, long cast behind,” have reappeared, in a more attractive guise, and, consecrated by time, have secured a firm hold in the sentiments of European nations.
To weave romance and mystery around the four points of the compass might appear an impossible task, yet this feat was successfully performed by our rude forefathers, to whose primitive minds the plain, undeviating phenomena of Nature conveyed comfort or warning. A few simple superstitions, bequeathed from father to son, and ever amplified throughout a thousand generations, became at last a somewhat complex body of doctrine. This accumulated lore is now being rapidly scattered to the winds by the growth of science and the spread of education, but stray fragments may still be gathered by the student.
The magnetic compass, of which the history is a little uncertain (see p. 228, _supra_), may be put aside in our present inquiry, since it belongs to a state of society of comparatively high development. The unembellished teaching which is to be examined dates far earlier than the birth of science in the Middle Ages, or the period of the introduction of the magnetic needle into Europe. We shall find, however, that the folk-lore of the Cardinal Points received many additions at the hands of Mediaeval symbolists. The mythology of that epoch has, indeed, been fitly compared to a complex alloy, formed by the blending of pure ores from various sources. The traditions of previous ages were retained, and blended, but new material was thrown into the crucible.