“Edibles & Potables” is F&D’s weekly Sunday morning glance at the world of food and drink outside our metropolitan Louisville coverage area.
We all must work to put food on the table, but what if the job in question involved nothing more than eating the food?
Quite a few of us would jump at chance to be paid just to eat, although it might be worth reading the contractual fine print in the case of this particular form of employment.
The Worst Freelance Gig in History Was Being the Village Sin Eater, by Natalie Zarrelli (Atlas/Gastro Obscura)
WHEN A LOVED ONE DIED in parts of England, Scotland, or Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries, the family grieved, placed bread on the chest of the deceased, and called for a man to sit in front of the body. The family of the deceased watched as this man, the local professional sin eater, absorbed the sins of the departed’s soul.
The family who hired the sin eater believed that the bread literally soaked up their loved one’s sins; once it had been eaten, all the misdeeds were passed on to the hired hand. The sin eater’s own soul was heavy with the ill deeds of countless men and women from his village or town—he paid a high spiritual price for little worldly return. The coin he was given was worth a mere four English pence, the equivalent of a few U.S. dollars today. Usually, the only people who would dare risk their immortal souls during such a religious era were the very poor, whose desire for a little bread and drink outweighed such concerns.
Hazarding a guess, there seems little danger of sin-eating becoming a gig economy app, even if Hayek would probably approve.
Concurrently, Rod Serling was a colossus of early television. His series The Twilight Zone is remembered fondly, has been revived numerous times, and is an American cultural landmark.
However Night Gallery, which followed in 1970, was short-lived and far less known. I can attest to at least one outstanding episode, which has remained lodged in my memory since I first viewed it at the tender age of 11: “The Sins of the Fathers” from Season 2 (aired 2/23/72), with teleplay by Halsted Welles and a story by Christianna Brand.
Here’s the link to an excellent review by David Juhl of the episode. Surely it is available somewhere as video.
In plague- and famine-filled Wales during the Middle Ages, a well-to-do family with a dead patriarch seeks the services of a “sin-eater,” one who takes on the deceased’s lifetime worth of sins so that he may go to heaven by feasting as his corpse lies nearby.
This is a fascinating topic, albeit one that might be viewed as indelicate, and so I’ve kept the quotes to a minimum. If your curiosity is piqued, there exist ample online resources for further examination.
