Unhappily all ghosts are not open to persuasion, and see through the
designs of the mourners, and with them severer measures have to be
resorted to. Among the Sclavs of the Danube and the Czechs, the bereaved,
after the funeral, on going home turn themselves about after every few
steps and throw sticks, stones, mud, even hot coals in the direction of
the churchyard, so as to frighten the spirit back to the grave so
considerately provided for it. A Finnish tribe has not even the decency to
wait till the corpse is covered with soil; they fire pistols and guns
after it as it goes to its grave, and lies in it.
[...] Those Finns who fired guns after a dead man had another expedient for
holding him fast, and that was to nail him down in his coffin. The Arabs
tie his legs together. The Wallacks drive a long nail through the skull;
and this usage explains the many skulls that have been exhumed in Germany
thus perforated. The Icelanders, when a ghost proved troublesome, opened
the grave, cut off the dead man’s head, and made the body sit on it. That,
they concluded, would effectually puzzle it how to get about.
