which binds her to her own family and unites herself to that of her husband by certain formalities, in which the groomsman strikes the chain with his dagger, having first wound it three times round the bride. The same triple ceremony is observed in the husband's house on the third or fourth day after the wedding, usually called the "bridal night." In his turn the fugitive criminal seeking shelter from the law finds security if he succeeds in winding round his neck the family chain, for by doing this he identifies himself with the family cult and, as it were, places himself under the protection of those ancestors, reverence to whom is connected with the worship of the hearth chain. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the stealing of the chain or the mere throwing it aside by a stranger should be regarded in the light of a sacrilege requiring blood idemnity. The veneration of the chain does not, however, entirely replace that of the hearth itself, and to this day the Ossete when sacrificing throws on the fire the first morsel or the first drops of blood, every sacrifice requiring according to his notions fire to be made acceptable to God.

We know that the cult of the family hearth wherever it is met with is closely connected with ancestral worship, a fact doubtless attributable to the views held by primitive man on the supernatural life. He believed that the dead had the same wants as the living, that they needed food and drink, and he saw in offerings of this food a means of constant intercourse between past and present generations, while an apparent acceptance of the food offered to them is supplied by its destruction by fire.1 This is why the burning of the sacrificial animal, or a part of it, and the libation on the fire of wine, is so frequently met with in the Hindu, Greek and Roman ritual. All those more or less fragmentary facts on which we found our conclusions of the close connection between the hearth and ancestral worship are fully represented by analogies in the contemporary life

1 The laws of Manu, however, prescribe the eating of the sacrificial food as the duty of the higher caste of officiating priests who might alone do this. Cf. Sir W. Muir.

of the Ossetes. The funeral oration by a relative of the deceased, in which the All-merciful Barastyr (a kind of Pluto) is invoked to take him under his care, that he may for ever partake of the bliss of Paradise, where his horse may pasture near him, and he may taste of joys such as no earthly lord had, and become the object of envy of those who had no such pleasures, either because of their sins or the poverty of their relatives preventing them from celebrating the sacrifices, and therefore leaving their departed to charity or stolen crusts. All this evidently indicates their belief that the future wellbeing of the dead depends on the quantity of food and drink supplied them by their descendants; this is why the relatives provide the departed with a bottle of arrack and some cakes, lest he should hunger and thirst on his way to the other world; breaking the bottle, and pouring the contents over his grave, and throwing the cakes on one side of it, pronouncing the words, "May this food and this drink last thee till thou reachest paradise (dzeneta)!" Fear lest the deceased should have nothing to eat in the next world haunts the Ossete for a whole year after the death of a near relative, Weekly on Fridays at sunset the widow visits her husband's grave, taking with her meat and drink. The first week of the new year a special service is held in his honour, and a gigantic loaf, large enough to last a man a whole month, is baked. Two sticks are crossed, and upon these are set the clothes of the departed, his weapons being also attached. This dummy figure is set upon a bench specially constructed for the purpose, and around it are scattered the favourite objects of the dead person; in front of the bench are placed a bowl of porridge and a bottle of arrack, specially designed for the departed. For a few minutes the assembled family retire from the spot to give him time to taste the food, in accordance with the custom according to which the elders partake of food apart from the younger members of the family. Among Muhammadans these ceremonies are observed on the first week of the New Year, while Christians celebrate them on Good Friday (sixth week in Lent). The only difference is that in the latter case the food offered to VOL. XX.-[NEW SERIES.]

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the dummy figure is of a Lenten kind. One of the old men or one of the old women proclaiming a toast, either in arrack or beer, says as follows: "May he (the deceased) be serene, and may his tomb be serene; may he be famous among the dead, that none may have command over his food, and that it may reach him intact, and be his for ever; that increasing it may multiply as long as the rocks roll down our hills, and the wheels roll over the plains, neither growing mouldy in summer, nor freezing in winter; and that he may divide it according to his good will among such of the dead as have no food!"

The same idea of the necessity of feeding the dead explains those frequent memorial ceremonies which have been estimated to cost each family at least 2000 rubles a year, and lead sometimes to their complete ruin. Christians celebrate no less than ten of them, Muhammadans seven, some lasting several days. On these occasions, says V. Miller, the food eaten is said not to benefit him who eats, but the dead in whose honour the feast is held, so that a person after a substantial meal at one of these feasts, on returning home has the right to demand that his usual dinner be served to him. There is no greater insult for an Ossete than to tell him that his dead are hungry. The dead too require firing besides food and drink, and it is for this reason that at the New Year, or strictly speaking on the last Friday in December, the house-owner stacks bundles of straw in his yard and sets them alight, with the words, "May our dead be serene, may their fire not be extinguished!" and he believes that in this way he supplies the dead with new fire for the coming year. From all that precedes we cannot but come to the conclusion that, like the ancient Hindus, Greeks and Romans, the Ossetes liken the life beyond the grave to that on earth. This appears not only from the practice of feeding the dead by the living, but from the care taken by Ossetes to supply the dead on burial with all the requisites for the future life. They bury him in his best clothes, in order that he may present a respectable appearance in the next world, however poorly he has been obliged to live in