RURAL FUNERALS
by Washington Irving
Here's a few flowers! but about midnight more:
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night;Are strewings fitt'st for graves-You were as flowers now wither'd; even soThese herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
CYMBELINE.
AMONG the beautiful and ******-hearted customs of rural life whichstill linger in some parts of England, are those of strewing flowersbefore the funerals, and planting them at the graves of departedfriends. These, it is said, are the remains of some of the rites ofthe primitive church; but they are of still higher antiquity, havingbeen observed among the Greeks and Romans, and frequently mentioned bytheir writers, and were, no doubt, the spontaneous tributes ofunlettered affection, originating long before art had tasked itself tomodulate sorrow into song, or story it on the monument. They are nowonly to be met with in the most distant and retired places of thekingdom, where fashion and innovation have not been able to throng in,and trample out all the curious and interesting traces of the oldentime.
In Glamorganshire, we are told, the bed whereon the corpse lies iscovered with flowers, a custom alluded to in one of the wild andplaintive ditties of Ophelia:
White his shroud as the mountain snow
Larded all with sweet flowers;
Which be-wept to the grave did go,
With true love showers.
There is also a most delicate and beautiful rite observed in some ofthe remote villages of the south, at the funeral of a female who hasdied young and unmarried. A chaplet of white flowers is borne beforethe corpse by a young girl nearest in age, size, and resemblance,and is afterwards hung up in the church over the accustomed seat ofthe deceased. These chaplets are sometimes made of white paper, inimitation of flowers, and inside of them is generally a pair ofwhite gloves. They are intended as emblems of the purity of thedeceased, and the crown of glory which she has received in heaven.
In some parts of the country, also, the dead are carried to thegrave with the singing of psalms and hymns: a kind of triumph, "toshow," says Bourne, "that they have finished their course with joy,and are become conquerors." This, I am informed, is observed in someof the northern counties, particularly in Northumberland, and it has apleasing, though melancholy effect, to hear, of a still evening, insome lonely country scene, the mournful melody of a funeral dirgeswelling from a distance, and to see the train slowly moving along thelandscape.
Thus, thus, and thus, we compass round
Thy harmlesse and unhaunted ground,
And as we sing thy dirge, we will
The daffodill
And other flowers lay upon
The altar of our love, thy stone.
HERRICK.
There is also a solemn respect paid by the traveller to the passingfuneral in these sequestered places; for such spectacles, occurringamong the quiet abodes of nature, sink deep into the soul. As themourning train approaches, he pauses, uncovered, to let it go by; hethen follows silently in the rear; sometimes quite to the grave, atother times for a few hundred yards, and, having paid this tributeof respect to the deceased, turns and resumes his journey.
The rich vein of melancholy which runs through the Englishcharacter, and gives it some of its most touching and ennoblinggraces, is finely evidenced in these pathetic customs, and in thesolicitude shown by the common people for an honored and a peacefulgrave. The humblest peasant, whatever may be his lowly lot whileliving, is anxious that some little respect may be paid to hisremains. Sir Thomas Overbury, describing the "faire and happymilkmaid," observes, "thus lives she, and all her care is, that shemay die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stucke upon herwindingsheet." The poets, too, who always breathe the feeling of anation, continually advert to this fond solicitude about the grave. In"The Maid's Tragedy," by Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a beautifulinstance of the kind, describing the capricious melancholy of abroken-hearted girl:
When she sees a bank
Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tellHer servants, what a pretty place it wereTo bury lovers in; and make her maids
Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.
The custom of decorating graves was once universally prevalent:
osiers were carefully bent over them to keep the turf uninjured, andabout them were planted evergreens and flowers. "We adorn theirgraves," says Evelyn, in his Sylva, "with flowers and redolent plants,just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared in HolyScriptures to those fading beauties, whose roots being buried indishonor, rise again in glory." This usage has now become extremelyrare in England; but it may still be met with in the church-yards ofretired villages, among the Welsh mountains; and I recollect aninstance of it at the small town of Ruthen, which lies at the headof the beautiful vale of Clewyd. I have been told also by a friend,who was present at the funeral of a young girl in Glamorganshire, thatthe female attendants had their aprons full of flowers, which, as soonas the body was interred, they stuck about the grave.
He noticed several graves which had been decorated in the samemanner. As the flowers had been merely stuck in the ground, and notplanted, they had soon withered, and might be seen in various statesof decay; some drooping, others quite perished. They were afterwardsto be supplanted by holly, rosemary, and other evergreens; which onsome graves had grown to great luxuriance, and overshadowed thetombstones.