Mourning Customs Around the World

1874

The usages regarding mourning have varied much at different times and in different countries. Among the Jews, the duration of mourning for the dead was generally seven days, but sometimes protracted to thirty. It consisted in tearing the clothes, smiting the breast, weeping, going barefoot, cutting off the hair, etc., etc., etc.

Among the Greeks, the period of mourning was thirty days, except in Sparta, where it was limited to ten. Among the Romans, the color of mourning for both sexes, was black or dark blue, under the republic; but under the empire, the men only wore black, the women white. Men also wore this mourning a few days, women a year, when the relation was a very near one.

In modern Europe the ordinary color for mourning is black; in Turkey, violet; in China, white; in Egypt, yellow; in Ethiopia, brown. In Arabia the men wear no mourning. The women stain their hands and feet with indigo, which they suffer to remain for eight days, during which time they abstain from milk, on the ground that its color ill becomes their gloom.

In the Feejee islands, after the death of a chief, a general fast until evening is observed for ten or twenty days, the women burn their bodies, and fifty or one hundred fingers are amputated to hang above the dead man's tomb. The Sandwich Islanders paint the lower part of their faces, and knock out their fore teeth.