Download Ebook - Free History Ebooks

Some Ideas about a Future Life 109
The Egyptians also placed their land of the dead to the
west. Whenever it was possible their tombs were on the
west bank of the Nile. The Nile was crossed, and when they
were on the eastern shore the procession passed over a sacred
lake. As the mourners passed on, the constant cry was, " To
the West, to the West." The soul of the dead man was
supposed to journey to the under world by a water progress.
The necessity for an attendant dog is a superstition held
in the west as well as in the east. It is a popular belief
throughout all that part of France which formed the ancient
Armorica, that the dead betake themselves at the moment
of their departure to the parish priest of Braspar, whose
dop" escorts them to Great Britain. To this day it is said
to be the custom in the parish of Plougnel, on the river
Treguire in Brittany, for corpses to be conveyed to the
churchyard by boat over a narrow arm of the sea called
Passage de I'Enfer, instead of taking them by the shorter land
route. In Scandinavian mythology, a fabulous dog called
Garmr was believed to guard the entrance to the infernal
regions. Several of the northern nations of Europe believed
the dead had to cross over water in boats to their future home.
For this reason, in Scandinavia, bodies were sometimes
buried in ships. A large vessel containing the bones and
weapons of some deceased chief was found a few years
ago near the Sonde Fjord in Norway. Sweden, too, has
popular legends to the same effect. Thus, Odin is fabled
to have conveyed the slain from Brahalla to Valhalla in a
golden ship. In Germany, again, popular opinion of old
assigned Great Britain, as being across the water, to be
the Land of Souls.