roof and then blackened.[1] But at the court-ceremony the production of the protective ideograph by the use of the magic-working broom was doubtless thought to add something to the ideograph's efficacy.
There is a practice of scattering salt about a room, after the removal from it of a corpse, and then sweeping the salt out, for the purpose of rendering the room ritually clean [Yokohama]. While the employment of the salt[2] seems to be the essential feature of this proceeding, I think that the sweeping is undoubtedly intended not merely as a means for removing the salt after use, but as in itself having a purificatory effect, for a quotation cited infra (p. 178), although possibly referring to some other Japanese localities, apparently speaks of sweeping for the purpose of purification after the removal of a corpse.[3]
Perhaps the practice of carefully sweeping out the rooms in which an unwelcome guest has been, after the visitor has left the house, for the purpose of keeping him from repeating his visit [Chikuzen province], is based on an idea of sweeping out all influences belonging to him which he has left in the house, so that there will be nothing to tend to draw him back there again. I am inclined to
- ↑ E. S. Morse, Japanese Homes and their Surroundings, pp. 85, 86.
- ↑ When, from a Shintō household, a body has been taken for removal to the cemetery, the house is purified "by prayers and other observances, one of which is the scattering of salt and water upon the floor and at the entrance. When the mourners return, they are presented with water to wash their hands and rinse out their mouths, and salt is cast over them as a purifier" (A. H. Lay, "Japanese Funeral Rites," in Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan, vol. xix. [1891], p. 541. Cf. Man, 1918, p. 93).
- ↑ In Vogtland and in Lusatia, after the corpse has been taken out, three little piles of salt are made in the death-chamber, which are then swept out and, together with the broom, thrown into the cemetery or into a field, in order that the dead will not return (Samter, op. cit. pp. 155 and 32). Sweeping the house after the removal of a corpse from it is a widespread practice (cf. Samter, pp. 31, 32). For a Jamaican negro custom of sweeping after a death, one of a number of customs closely paralleling customs in Japan, see "A," "Folklore of the Negroes of Jamaica," in Folk-Lore, vol. xv. (1904), p. 88.
