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CEOSSING THE WATER. 831
a
passage.; Sigmundr lays the dead in the boat, which has then
its
fulljfreight, theTunknown ppshes off and sails away with the
corpsejgsem. 170-1. Fornald. sog.. 1, 142. Frotho s Law p. 87
lays^down distinctions of rank : \ Centurionis vel satrapae corpus
dena autem
rogo propria nave constructo funeranctum constituit ;
gubernatorum corpora unius puppis igne consumi praecepit ;
ducem quempiam aut regem interfectum proprio injectum navigio
concremari.^J The dead larlm&gus is conveyed in a ship, by his
widow to a holy land, larlm. saga cap. 45. A Swedish folk-tale
(Afzelms 1, 4) speaks oF~a golden ship lying sunk near ~t
schlusselberg at Runemadj iiT that ship Odin is said to have
carried the slain from Bravalla_fo Valliall. In the 0. FT. romance
of Lancelot__du lac, ed. 1591, p.
147 the demoiselle d Escalot
arranges what is to be done with her body : le pria, que son
corps fut mis en une nef richement equippee, que
Von laisseroit
aller an gre du vent sans conduite. 1 And in the romance of
Gawan a swan tows a boat in which lies a dead knight (Keller s
Romvart 670). Was it believed that the corpse, abandoned to
the sacred sea and the winds, would of itself arrive at the land
of death that was not to be reached under Tinman guidance ?
Here it is the corpse that is transported, in other legends
merely the soul when released from the body : it is over again
the distinction we noticed above, p. 827. In the Nialss. cap.
1 60, old Flosi, weary of life, is even said to have taken a battered
boat, and thrown himself on the mercy of the sea-waves : bar a
skip ok let i haf, ok hefir til ]?ess skips aldri spurt siftan/ never
heard of since.
The Greeks believed that Charon ferried the souls in a narrow
two- oared boat over the Styx, Acheron or Cocytus to the kingdom
of Hades. For this he charged a fare, ra iropOfjuia, therefore
they placed an obolos (the danaka)
in the mouth of the dead. 2
This custom of putting a small coin in the mouth of a corpse
occurs among Germans_tqOjJ3uperst. I, 207 where a modern and
1 Cento novelle antiche 81 : La clamigella di Scalot ; the navicella sanza vela,
sanza remi e sanza neuno sopra sagliente is carried down to Camalot, to the court
of Ke Artu.
2 Diodor. 1, 90. Eurip. Ale. 253. 441. Aen. G, 298. At Hermione in Argolis,
supposed to be no great distance from the underworld, no money was given to the
dead, Strabo 8, 373. These coins are often found in ancient tombs, K. Fr.
Hermann s Antiq. 198.