the hero and robbed of his treasures.




FUNERAL RITES AND MAN'S FUTURE STATE.

"Barrow-burials".--The obsequies of great men (such as the classic
funeral of "Beowulf's Lay", 3138-80) are much noticed by Saxo, and we
might expect that he knew such a poem (one similar to Ynglingatal, but
not it) which, like the Books of the Kings of Israel and Judah, recorded
the deaths and burials, as well as the pedigrees and deeds, of the
Danish kings.

The various stages of the "obsequy by fire" are noted; the byre
sometimes formed out of a ship; the "sati"; the devoted bower-maidens
choosing to die with their mistress, the dead man's beloved (cf. The
Eddic funerals of Balder, Sigfred, and Brunhild, in the Long "Brunhild's
Lay", Tregrof Gudrumar and the lost poem of Balder's death paraphrased
in the prose Edda); the last message given to the corpse on the pyre
(Woden's last words to Balder are famous); the riding round the pyre;
the eulogium; the piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days,
as the size of many existing grass mounds assure us; the funeral feast,
where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the
epitaph, like an ogham, set up on a stone over the barrow.

The inclusion of a live man with the dead in a barrow, with the live or
fresh-slain beasts (horse and bound) of the dead man, seems to point to
a time or district when burning was not used. Apparently, at one time,
judging from Frode's law, only chiefs and warriors were burnt.