Milk for the dead

After Vespers on the eve of All Saints' Day, Bretons would commonly visit the cemeteries to kneel at the graves of their loved ones; to pray and anoint the hollow of the gravestones with holy water or milk...

A very interesting custom indeed...Here we have pretty explicit water/milk libation sacrifice to the dead...

I first talked about the "thirsty" dead first in my posts "Thirst" and "White feast" about South Slavic beliefs that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...And that thirsty ancestors will "drink rain from the clouds and will cause drought"...

I then talked about "thirsty dead" in my post "Lapis Manalis" about Roman belief that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...BTW, do you see the similarity between cup and ring marked stones and rain caused ripples on water? Or is it just me?

I finally talked about "thirsty dead" in my post "Care of the dead" about Hittite and Sumerian belief that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...And if you forget to respect the sacred bond with the dead...

It is interesting that in Brittany, the libation was poured into what looks like a stone mortar (quern) hole...

These are knocking stones from Scotland...

They were used as mortars for husking and pounding barley and other cereals...I talked about them in my post "Knocking stones"...

Interestingly, some of them were locally known as "fonts"...Confusion? Well, no, not really. From: 

In Baltic countries, quern stones were once buried as "corner stones", the most important stones in the house foundation...

And milk libations were poured into the hollow "for the house snake", which was believed to contain the spirit of the ancestors...I talked about this in my post "Stones with narrow bottom bowls"...

Meanwhile in Scotland: in the Highlands, knocking stones were occasionally used as the receptacle into which a daily offering of milk for the Gruagach was poured. Gruagach, a domestic spirit which looked after the cattle/household...

The above is copied from historian, Stuart McHardy's essay, "Gruagach; a wee remnant of something much bigger?"...

That's the same house snake I talked about in my post "House snake"...

In Belarus, when storytellers want to emphasise that something happened long time ago, they would say "in the old days, when people kept snakes in their houses"...And fed them milk...Again because they believed that these snakes contained the spirits of their ancestors and were protecting the family...

Interesting, right? 

House snake

In Belarus, when storytellers want to emphasise that something happened long time ago, they would say "in the old days, when people kept snakes in their houses"...

In the records from the 16th century, Yan Lasitsky says this about house snakes in Belarus: 

"...In Belarusian lands, many people kept pet snakes in their homes and fed them...In large families, during meals, children were fed separately from adults, sitting on the floor around a large bowl of food. When the food was served, the house snake would crawl out of its hiding place and would eat together with the children...Children often pushed the snake away, hit it on the forehead with spoons 🙂, but the snake never got angry nor did it bite them. Belarusian peasants put an uncovered jug of milk on the ground of the house, so that the house snake could feed freely when it wanted...If the house snake lived in a barn, it sucked milk directly from the cows. The house snake was the guardian of the household both magically, and practically, by killing rodents that disturbed animals and brought disease...Therefore, it was forbidden to kill or chase away the house snake..."

The house snake, the protector of the house and the family, was also the thing among Balkan Slavs and the Balts...

That comes directly from the belief that the house snake contains the spirit of the first ancestor that died in the house. The protective spirit...That belief was preserved among South Slavs...

I talked about this in my posts "Stones with narrow bottom bowls" and "New house"...

One other interesting thing. Dabog, old Serbian supreme god, was the sun god. Dabog is also found in Belorussian folklore where they also equate him with the sun...I talked about this in my post about the last megalithic ritual in Europe from Belarus...

Serbian ethnographer Cajkanovic, believed Dabog was also the god of the underworld, god of the dead...Later he was replaced by St Sava, Serbian Patron Saint...

And snakes, being solar animals, follow Sun (Dabog) wherever he goes...It is in our world when sun is here (day, hot half of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is there (night, cold half of the year)...I talked about it in my posts "The Chthonic animal", "Enemy of the sun", "Letnitsa treasure"...

Which is why snakes are also "Chthonic" animals, and why Slavs believed that house snake contains the spirit of their ancestors...

And why the house snake lived under the hearth/stove...Where the dead gathered too... How old is this belief in the Balkans? Very old...

In Mesolithic - Neolithic Lepenski Vir culture (9000-6000BC) from Serbia, the dead were buried under the floor of the houses, near or under the hearth. The people from Lepenski Vir culture literally "lived with their dead"...