“Ne’er do the blessed Gods refuse · To share the food which mortals use”

“Ne’er do the blessed Gods refuse / To share the food which mortals use” expresses a compact claim about the relation between mortal offerings and divine acceptance. The verse gives Ráma’s funeral offering a place within a shared order of eating: food used by the living is not beneath the gods, but something they may receive alongside them.

Wording and Meaning

The expression appears as part of Ráma’s address to the deceased king: “Enjoy, great King, the cake which we / Thy children eat and offer thee! / For ne'er do blessed Gods refuse / To share the food which mortals use.” Its reasoning moves from a particular act of filial offering to a general assurance about the gods. The cake is at once food eaten by the children and a gift presented to their father; the appeal to divine precedent makes the offering seem fitting rather than inadequate.

Ritual Setting

Ráma places the cake on sacred grass and speaks while weeping, addressing the king as the recipient of a child’s funeral gift. The verse therefore belongs to a scene of mourning and ancestral offering, not to an abstract discussion of food. Its claim helps connect the ordinary meal of the living with the ritual act performed for the dead, while the sacred grass and the spoken address mark the offering as deliberate and reverent.

Repetition and Consolation

The assurance returns in a bereaved woman’s recollection of an ancient text. Her version reads, “Ne'er do the blessed Gods refuse / To eat the food their children use.” The wording shifts from gods sharing what mortals use to gods eating what their children use, bringing the maxim closer to the parent-child relation enacted by Ráma’s offering. After she speaks, the ladies soothe her and go to Ráma’s hermitage. The repeated saying thus links ritual precedent with consolation: the offering can be understood not only as duty, but as food accepted within a bond between children and a dead parent.