People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — MESSAGES TO THE DEAD. [ARTICLE]

MESSAGES TO THE DEAD.

How Departed Friends Are Honored In Slam. A beautiful custom of the people of Siam is one by which they do honor to their dead. At full moon in October, and again in November, three evenings arc devoted to setting lighted candles afloat on the border of the sea, in the belief that they will be borne away to those who have passed out of this life. The humblest style, says the Saturday Review, in which the ceremony can be performed is yet pretty enough. The broad, strong leaf of a plantain is bent or folded into the shape of a boat or raft. In the middle of this simple structure a tiny taper is fixed upright. The “katong,” or raft, of which this is the simplest form, is then kept ready in the house until the auspicious moment—predicted by the family priest—has arrived. > Then at this moment, when the water is silvered over by the beams of the broad, rising moon, the taper is lighted and the tiny raft is launched upon the waves. Very slowly at first it makes its way along the edge of the ebbing tide; then, wafted gently by the still evening air 'into the swifter current, it drifts further away, until only a bright speck of light distinguishes it from the rippling surface all around. When the night is fine thousands of these little stars of light may be seen twinkling on the broad bosom of the Mcnam, all wending their silent way tovyard the boundless Bea, all bearing silent messages to departed friends who have already gone to the great unknown land.—Youth's Companion.