In the Highlands of Bavaria we are told that when the corpse is placed upon the bier the room is carefully washed out and cleaned. It was formerly the custom for the housewife then to prepare the Leichen-nudeln, which I may perhaps freely translate as Corpse-cakes. Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, which lay there enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared the belief attached that they contained the virtues and advantages (Vortheile) of the departed, and that thus the living strength of the deceased passed over by means of the corpse-cakes into the kinsmen who consumed them, and so was retained within the kindred.[1]
Here we find ourselves at an earlier stage in the disintegration of tradition than in the Welsh custom. The eating is not merely that of food placed upon the breast of the dead man, and so in some way symbolically identified with him. The dough in rising is believed actually to absorb his qualities, which are transmitted to those of his kin who partake of the cakes, and, consistently with the custom requiring the relatives to eat these cakes, that the qualities transferred are not evil but good ones: the living strength, the virtues and so on of the dead are retained within the kin.
Something like this may have been the meaning of the Dyak funeral rite in which food is set before the dead ere the coffin is closed. It is allowed to stand for about an hour by the corpse and is then devoured by the nearest relations of the departed.[2] So also when a Hungarian Gipsy dies he is carried out of the tent or hut. It is then the duty of the members of his family (Stammgenossen) to offer to the deceased gifts, especially food and drink of
