Sin-eaters

Sin-eaters, a class of men formerly employed in Wales and on the Welsh border, in connection with funeral rites, to eat a piece of bread and drink a cup of ale placed on the bier, and so symbolically take upon themselves the sins of the deceased. As soon as this was done the sin-eater 'pronounced the ease and rest of the soul departed, for which he would pawn his own soul,' and so took his way, having freed the dead sinner from the necessity of walking an unquiet ghost. The name may be due to a mistaken interpretation of Hosea, iv. 8—'They eat up the sin of my people;' but the real origin of this strange custom must undoubtedly be found in the Levitical scape-goat (Levit. xvi. 21-22). Aubrey is the chief authority for this usage, and describes it as once common in Shropshire, Herefordshire, and North Wales. It seems also to have been practised in Galloway. See the paper by E. Sidney Hartland in Folklore in 1892.