That Old Black Magic

For reasons without solid connection to anything dark or gloomy, my thoughts yesterday began roaming over the customs that surround the modern approach to death, and the treatment we give to honor and respect our deceased loved ones. Practices are not the same everywhere and ceremonies vary greatly in some cases, but there are ideas and steps taken in Western culture that have an ancient resonance.

Our word “funeral” derives from the Latin funus meaning “torch,” stemming from the Roman practice of lining the route to a burial site with flaming torches to guide the departed soul to its eternal abode. The Romans also believed that lighted candles placed around the deceased would frighten away spirits hoping to reanimate the corpse and take possession of it. The use of candles at modern day services for the dead extends back to that old custom. Traditions surrounding death, in Western cultures at least, pre-date the Romans and have been ongoing for something like 50,000 years. Archeology has traced the funeral tradition back to Western Asia’s Neanderthal man and found that they began the practice of burying their dead, interring the deceased with food, weapons for hunting, and charcoal for fire. In a final homage they scattered flowers over the body.

There is nothing inherently respectful about the color black and the wearing of black at funerals grew not out of respect, but out of fear. In ancient societies a stranger, a foe or a dead body were each something to be feared and it was this fear that brought black into ceremonies involving the dead. Anthropology has taught us that primitive white men painted their bodies black at funerals in an attempt to disguise themselves from spirits. Like the Roman tradition of torches and candlelight, the idea of black worked its way down to us in a slightly altered form. Rather than paint, people began covering themselves in black clothing for rites of the dead. Those relatives who wore black for weeks or months were not necessarily paying respect, but hiding behind protective camouflage. The wearing of a veil as well came out of this fear.

In ancient Sumeria the family of the deceased wove large baskets from plaited twigs to place the deceased into for burial and interestingly enough, the word “coffin” comes from a Greek word for “basket.” But here again, the placement of a dead body in a basket, or other container is a custom that grew out of fear. Some societies went even further in their attempts to prevent haunting and cut off the head and feet before binding the body securely. The route to a place of burial was circuitous and confusing so as to stymie the corpse’s return to home.

These precautions were not enough to assuage the fears of the living, and so further measures were devised to make burial permanent. Six feet under was a comforting precaution, but to that had to be added a wooden coffin, with the lid solidly nailed shut. Archeology has unearthed coffins that show evidence of once being sealed with many more nails than needed. After the coffin with all its nail-tight closure was placed in the ground, the next barrier-to-escape came with the placement of a large and heavy stone on top of the coffin. The dirt was filled in and a final large stone was placed on top of the grave—a tombstone.

Fear kept burial sites lonely and untended and it was many years before people began visiting the places where deceased family and friends lay in their eternal rest. In time it became a practice to inscribe names on the large stones seated upon the graves, eventually leading to longer inscriptions to include dates and a few meaningful words.

Make a Wish

There is an old superstitious custom once familiar around dinner tables, or at least it was in the American south where I grew up. Now that cell phones, Facebook and Twitter have become as common as silverware at dinner tables, the sight of two people making secret wishes and tugging on opposite ends of a chicken’s breastbone hoping to break off the larger half is a vanishing tradition. Gone with the wind, as they might say, but thinking about that I wondered if it was a localized custom unfamiliar to people outside of the south. That turns out to be not the case at all.

Most of us have heard of the northern region of Italy known as Tuscany, so famous for its cuisine, beautiful old farmhouses and exquisite landscape. Roughly 2,400 years ago this area was home to the Etruscans and a civilization flourishing 500 years before the founding of the Roman Republic. The Etruscans believed that the hen and the cock were soothsayers of a kind. It sounds foolish to us, but this belief was based in part on the fact that a hen squawks to foretell the laying of an egg and a cock crows to herald the dawn. They used a process called the “hen oracle” to divine answers to their most pressing problems. A circle was drawn in the dirt and divided into twenty parts, each representing a letter of their alphabet. Grains of corn were placed in each section and a sacred hen was placed in the center. The hen’s order of pecking at the corn generated a sequence of letters which were then interpreted by a high priest as answers to difficult problems.

When a sacred hen was killed, the collarbone was laid out to dry. Those wishing to benefit from the oracle’s powers would pick up the bone and stroke it gently while making a wish. From this practice we got the term “wishbone.” When the custom made its way to Rome a few centuries later it changed somewhat and two people began breaking the bone, with the secret wish going to the one with the larger broken half. It was the Romans who took the superstition to England, and it had become an established English tradition by the time the Pilgrims reached the New World. Early American folklore suggests it was a part of the first Thanksgiving celebration at Plymouth Colony in 1621.

The next time you hear or use the expression ‘a lucky break’ remember that it all started with ancient people in Italy wishing on chicken bones.

A Grain of Salt

In a restaurant the other day, I noticed someone at an adjacent table accidentally knock over the salt shaker, quickly take up a pinch and toss it over his left shoulder. It was a gesture—call it a superstitious remedy, if you will—not noticed in a long while and had me wondering just how prevalent it is in these days when the presence of salt is so taken for granted. Not quite the same for people living in earlier times when salt was harder to come by and too expensive for many. From that history came the veneration and the foreboding attached to its waste or spillage.

The act of throwing a pinch of spilled salt over the left shoulder is a part of ancient history, practiced even by the Sumerians in 3500 BC. The superstition was shared by the Egyptians, Assyrians and later the Greeks. Not much later Roman soldiers were given special allowances for salt rations called salarium, or ‘salt money.’ The writer Petronius in his Satyricon coined the expression ‘not worth his salt’ referring to a Roman soldier who didn’t earn his keep. That word salarium—the first part meaning ‘salt’—is the origin of our word, ‘salary’ and keeps alive a connection between salt and money.

Modern archeology teaches that as far back as 6500 BC the people of Europe were mining the first salt mines on the continent. These mines were located in present day Austria near the city of Salzburg, the ‘City of Salt.’ Not only for the seasoning of food, salt was useful in purifying water and in preserving meat and fish. The Romans also used it as a medication for wounds. The Hebrews, Greeks and Romans all used salt in their sacrifices. In medieval England salt was expensive and affordable only to the higher ranks of society, its value resting on its scarcity. Salt was less easily attainable in northern Europe than in countries with warmer climates where it could be obtained more cheaply by the evaporation of seawater. This value is the source of the high symbolic status given to salt in the day-to-day language that originated in England at that period and in many instances has been carried forward to the present.

In language, literature and art worldwide this valuable mineral has permeated conversation, daily life and text. The word ‘salt’ appears forty-one times in thirty-five different verses of the King James Bible. Idioms using the word are abundant and come in many forms depending upon the country and language. A small detail in a masterpiece by Leonardo Da Vinci provides meaningful commentary on the place of salt in near-Eastern society of 2000 years ago. In an obscure section of his painting The Last Supper, Da Vinci shows Judas tipping over the salt cellar, an action in that time and place called “betraying the salt” and symbolizing the betrayal of one’s master or someone owed loyalty and devotion. In the painting, this spilled salt identifies Judas, symbolically at least as the betrayer of Christ.

Skillet Corn Bread

The staff of life—Bread. It has for many centuries been essential to lives around the globe, a part of worlds old and new from ancient Egyptians to Rome and Greece, prized by princes and paupers and with symbolic significance to most religions.

American colonists arrived in the New World accustomed to bread made from flour, rejecting corn initially as a grain fit only for livestock. They soon learned from Native Americans to appreciate corn as a basis for delicious bread and puddings. Corn soon found a permanent place in American kitchens. “Old-fashioned” cooking, especially in the south, of corn pone, corn pudding and corn bread were easier alternatives to wheat based bread for people living in the country. Louisiana heat and the scarcity of flour complicated the making of traditional bread, and instead Cajuns and Creoles made corn pudding, sweet potato pudding, corn bread, biscuits or rice cakes.

Long a subject of superstition in Louisiana, one old Creole belief tells us that a loaf of bread upside down on the table is evidence that the devil is around. It was once considered acceptable by many to beat one’s wife if her bread didn’t rise, felt to be good evidence of infidelity.

In his book, The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine, John Folse explains, ‘Ever since the native Indians introduced corn to Americans, corn bread has been a staple on the southern table. The Creoles adapted this simple bread using different ingredients and flavorings such as jalapeños to create new recipes.’

A casual invitation to dinner led to the thought of contributing something with a Louisiana flavor. The big Folse history and cookbook offers four recipes for corn bread in its chapter on breads. CREOLE CORN BREAD seemed like a good choice.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 can cream corn

1 lb. ground meat

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup milk

1 egg

1 onion diced

1½ cups grated cheese

2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and minced

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 375°. This method of cooking corn bread calls for the use of a cast iron skillet. Chef John Folse points out that corn bread is best prepared in a preheated cast iron skillet. In a medium saucepan brown the meat—in this case sausage— over medium-high heat. In a separate bowl combine the cornmeal, corn, salt, baking soda, milk and egg. Blend well. Pour half of the cornmeal mixture into the heated cast iron skillet. Layer the ground sausage, onions, cheese and jalapeños on top of the corn batter. Pour the remaining batter over the layers. Place in the oven and bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown. It should serve eight people.