Fairy Tales & Folklore
Giving Food over the Coffin
A crowd gathers outside a building around a coffin on a bier. A woman extends a dish across it towards a man on the opposite side, and another participant holds a cup. A child stands near the foot of the coffin, with a rural landscape visible beyond. The caption names the distribution of food over the coffin and identifies the image as derived from an old drawing. The preceding text describes relatives handing bread and cheese to the poor across the coffin before burial. The subsequent discussion considers, but does not settle, a connection with sin-eating. The complete frame and caption are retained. The original artist is unspecified, and the food distribution is not automatically labelled as a sin-eating ceremony.
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Citation
Unidentified original artist; reproduced from an old drawing. "Giving Food over the Coffin" [editorial title]. In British Goblins, Wirt Sikes; illustrations by T. H. Thomas. 1880, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington. Source scan leaf 339. Lumitheca. /gallery/image/british-goblins-plate-338
Source details
Editorial title and description. Source details from the Library catalogue.
Full source scan, printed caption and nearby prose actually viewed. Complete image boundary, caption and visible signatures preserved. Crop from checksum-verified private R2 reader derivative; no recolouring or reconstruction.
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Unidentified original artist; reproduced from an old drawing. Giving Food over the Coffin. British Goblins. Scan leaf 339. Lumitheca. https://lumitheca.com/gallery/image/british-goblins-plate-338