Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1896 — THE SIN-EATER. [ARTICLE]

THE SIN-EATER.

A Curious Funeral Rite Which Obtained In Wales. . The principality of Wales has within living memory possessed an official known as the “sin-eater.” It was the practice for a relative—usually a worm an —to put on the breast of a deceased person a quantity of bread and cheese and beer, and the sin-eater was sent for to consume them and to pronounce the everlasting rest of the departed. It was believed that in doing this he absolutely ate and appropriated to himself the sins symbolized by the viands, and thereby prevented their disturbing the repose of the sinner who had committed them. Such an arrangement jvould obviously leave nothing to be desired on the one side, but how it worked on the other we are not told. What was supposed to be the condition of this spiritual undertaker after the ceremony was concluded ? Did his “appropriation” of the dead man’s sins imply a sort of moral assimilation of them, answering to his physical assimilation of the bread and cheese ? The question would obviously be one of some importance to a sin-eater in large practice. IMfce responsibilities of his profusion were as great aa ties of his profession were as great as hypothesis, he would need to retire from it early, and to devote a considerable portion of his closing years to repentance and good works. Again, it is natural to ask what happened at the decease of a popular or “fashionable” sin-eater. Would anyone among his professional brethren; undertake to eat his sins, even in the first flush of satisfaction produced by. stepping into his shoes? If so, then,' indeed, has the epithet of “gallant” been rightly bestowed upon little Wales. It is as though one doctor succeeding to another’s practice should consent to assume the moral responsibility for his late colleague’s treatment of all his deceased patients, in addition to his own similar burdens. We yield to none in admiration of the quiet and homely heroism of the medical profession, but we doubt whethefcit would enable them to face such an ordeal as thy. As to the Welsh practitioners to whom we have compared them, we shrink from pursuing the analysis further. It is evident that, as in the schoolboy game of “conquerors,” where a stone which can smash the smasher, of, say, 43 other stones takes over all its conquests, and itBelf a “forty-fourer,” so the responsibilities of these unhappy men might accumulate at an alarming rate. One hardly dares to contemplate the internal condition of the sin-eater who had in life attended a long series of other sineaters. The cheese would be almost converted Into Welsh'rabbit before ho had got it down.—London Times.