Bart's body is carried home in the play Riders to The Sea, and he is put on the table. His feet are bare, and "a great wind" is blowing on them.

Feet are often symbolic, and this symbol occurs in mythology.

A Scottish custom called first-footing is still remembered today. If a tall, dark, and handsome man is the first to enter your home on New Year's Eve, it is considered a lucky omen for the coming new year. First-footers crossed the threshold at the stroke of midnight during Hogmanay.

"In all countries Halloween seems to have been the great season of prying into the future; all kinds of divination were put into practice that night."

In Wales, Halloween was the weirdest of all the Teir Nos Ysbrydion, or Three Spirit Nights, "when the wind, blowing over the feet of corpses, bore sighs to the houses of those who were to die within the year."

The familiar tune My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean seems silly, but some versions of it have winds blowing and stinking feet, possibly forgotten references to pagan customs of prediction.

The Norse also had a legend about feet. Skadi did a favor for the gods, so they told her she could marry any man she wanted, but there was a catch. She could only look at their feet to make her choice. She looked long at all of the feet, and then chose the cleanest pair.

Njord's home was called Noatun, which means harbor, and his wife was the giantess Skadi who married him because he had "beautiful feet". She later left him because they couldn't decide in whose dwelling they should live.

Since people will inevitably compare some ideas in Riders to The Sea to the story of Christ, it might be noted that nails were driven through His feet, and women cried at the foot of the cross. Christ also washed the feet of his disciples.

Various customs come together to make whole cloth of our beliefs and celebrations.