THE SCENE: Marco Polo describes a local custom of marrying the souls of dead children that is by turns morbid and by turns joyous.
THE TEXT: Here is another strange custom which I had forgotten to describe. You may take it for a fact that, when there are two men of whom one had had a male child who has died at the age of four, or what you will, and the other has had a female child who has also died, they arrange a marriage between them. They give the dead girl to the dead boy as a wife and draw up a deed of matrimony. Then they burn this deed, and declare that the smoke that rises into the air goes to their children in the other world and that they get wind of it and regard themselves as husband and wife. They hold a great wedding feast and scatter some of the food here and there and declare that too goes to their children in the other world. And here is something else that they do. They draw pictures on paper of men in the guise of slaves, and of horses, clothes, coins, and furniture and then burn them; and they declare that all these become the possessions of their children in the next world. When they have done this, they consider themselves to be kinsfolk and uphold their kinship just as firmly as if the children were alive.
– The Travels, Marco Polo, 14th Century AD
