________________________________________________
_
Rural Funerals
Here's a few flowers! but about midnight more:
The herbs that have oil them cold dew o' the night
Are strewings fitt'st for graves----
You were as flowers now withered; even so
These herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
CYMBELINE.
AMONG the beautiful and simple-hearted customs of rural life
which still linger in some parts of England are those of strewing
flowers before the funerals and planting them at the graves of
departed friends. These, it is said, are the remains of some of
the rites of the primitive Church; but they are of still higher
antiquity, having been observed among the Greeks and Romans, and
frequently mentioned by their writers, and were no doubt the
spontaneous tributes of unlettered affection, originating long
before art had tasked itself to modulate sorrow into song or
story it on the monument. They are now only to be met with in the
most distant and retired places of the kingdom, where fashion
and innovation have not been able to throng in and trample out
all the curious and interesting traces of the olden time.
In Glamorganshire, we are told, the bed whereon the corpse lies
is covered with flowers, a custom alluded to in one of the wild
and plaintive 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
of the remote villages of the south at the funeral of a female
who has died young and unmarried. A chaplet of white flowers is
borne before the corpse by a young girl nearest in age, size, and
resemblance, and is afterwards hung up in the church over the
accustomed seat of the deceased. These chaplets are sometimes
made of white paper, in imitation of flowers, and inside of them
is generally a pair of white gloves. They are intended as emblems
of the purity of the deceased, and the crown of glory which she
has received in heaven.
In some parts of the country, also, the dead are carried to the
grave with the singing of psalms and hymns--a kind of triumph,
"to show," says Bourne, "that they have finished their course
with joy, and are become conquerors." This, I am informed, is
observed in some of the northern counties, particularly in
Northumberland, and it has a pleasing, though melancholy effect
to hear of a still evening in some lonely country scene the
mournful melody of a funeral dirge swelling from a distance, and
to see the train slowly moving along the landscape.
Thus, thus, and thus, we compass round
Thy harmless 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
passing funeral in these sequestered places; for such spectacles,
occurring among the quiet abodes of Nature, sink deep into the
soul. As the mourning train approaches he pauses, uncovered, to
let it go by; he then follows silently in the rear; sometimes
quite to the grave, at other times for a few hundred yards, and,
having paid this tribute of respect to the deceased, turns and
resumes his journey.
The rich vein of melancholy which runs through the English
character, and gives it some of its most touching and ennobling
graces, is finely evidenced in these pathetic customs, and in the
solicitude shown by the common people for an honored and a
peaceful grave. The humblest peasant, whatever may be his lowly
lot while living, is anxious that some little respect may be paid
to his remains. Sir Thomas Overbury, describing the "faire and
happy milkmaid," observes, "thus lives she, and all her care is,
that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers
stucke upon her winding-sheet." The poets, too, who always
breathe the feeling of a nation, continually advert to this fond
solicitude about the grave. In The Maid's Tragedy, by Beaumont
and Fletcher, there is a beautiful instance of the kind
describing the capricious melancholy of a broken-hearted girl:
When she sees a bank
Stuck full of flowers, she, with a sigh, will tell
Her servants, what a pretty place it were
To bury lovers in; and made her maids
Bluck '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,
and about them were planted evergreens and flowers. "We adorn
their graves," says Evelyn, in his Sylva, "with flowers and
redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been
compared in Holy Scriptures to those fading beauties whose roots,
being buried in dishonor, rise, again in glory." This usage has
now become extremely rare in England; but it may still be met
with in the churchyards of retired villages, among the Welsh
mountains; and I recollect an instance of it at the small town of
Ruthven, which lies at the head of 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, that the female attendants had
their aprons full of flowers, which, as soon as the body was
interred, they stuck about the grave.
He noticed several graves which had been decorated in the same
manner. As the flowers had been merely stuck in the ground, and
not planted, they had soon withered, and might be seen in various
states of decay; some drooping, others quite perished. They were
afterwards to be supplanted by holly, rosemary, and other
evergreens, which on some graves had grown to great luxuriance,
and overshadowed the tombstones.
There was formerly a melancholy fancifulness in the arrangement
of these rustic offerings, that had something in it truly
poetical. The rose was sometimes blended with the lily, to form a
general emblem of frail mortality. "This sweet flower," said
Evelyn, "borne on a branch set with thorns and accompanied with
the lily, are natural hieroglyphics of our fugitive, umbratile,
anxious, and transitory life, which, making so fair a show for a
time, is not yet without its thorns and crosses." The nature and
color of the flowers, and of the ribbons with which they were
tied, had often a particular reference to the qualities or story
of the deceased, or were expressive of the feelings of the
mourner. In an old poem, entitled "Corydon's Doleful Knell," a
lover specifies the decorations he intends to use:
A garland shall be framed
By art and nature's skill,
Of sundry-colored flowers,
In token of good-will.
And sundry-colored ribbons
On it I will bestow;
But chiefly blacke and yellowe
With her to grave shall go.
I'll deck her tomb with flowers
The rarest ever seen;
And with my tears as showers
I'll keep them fresh and green.
The white rose, we are told, was planted at the grave of a
virgin; her chaplet was tied with white ribbons, in token of her
spotless innocence, though sometimes black ribbons were
intermingled, to bespeak the grief of the survivors. The red rose
was occasionally used, in remembrance of such as had been
remarkable for benevolence; but roses in general were
appropriated to the graves of lovers. Evelyn tells us that the
custom was not altogether extinct in his time, near his dwelling
in the county of Surrey, "where the maidens yearly planted and
decked the graves of their defunct sweethearts with rose-bushes."
And Camden likewise remarks, in his Britannia: "Here is also a
certain custom, observed time out of mind, of planting rose-trees
upon the graves, especially by the young men and maids who have
lost their loves; so that this churchyard is now full of them."
When the deceased had been unhappy in their loves, emblems of a
more gloomy character were used, such as the yew and cypress, and
if flowers were strewn, they were of the most melancholy colors.
Thus, in poems by Thomas Stanley, Esq. (published in 1651), is
the following stanza:
Yet strew
Upon my dismall grave
Such offerings as you have,
Forsaken cypresse and yewe;
For kinder flowers can take no birth
Or growth from such unhappy earth.
In The Maid's Tragedy, a pathetic little air, is introduced,
illustrative of this mode of decorating the funerals of females
who had been disappointed in love:
Lay a garland on my hearse
Of the dismall yew,
Maidens, willow branches wear,
Say I died true.
My love was false, but I was firm,
From my hour of birth;
Upon my buried body lie
Lightly, gentle earth.
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and
elevate the mind; and we have a proof of it in the purity of
sentiment and the unaffected elegance of thought which pervaded
the whole of these funeral observances. Thus it was an especial
precaution that none but sweet-scented evergreens and flowers
should be employed. The intention seems to have been to soften
the horrors of the tomb, to beguile the mind from brooding over
the disgraces of perishing mortality, and to associate the memory
of the deceased with the most delicate and beautiful objects in
nature. There is a dismal process going on in the grave, ere dust
can return to its kindred dust, which the imagination shrinks
from contemplating; and we seek still to think of the form we
have loved, with those refined associations which it awakened
when blooming before us in youth and beauty. "Lay her i' the
earth," says Laertes, of his virgin sister,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring.
Herrick, also, in his "Dirge of Jephtha," pours forth a fragrant
flow of poetical thought and image, which in a manner embalms the
dead in the recollections of the living.
Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,
And make this place all Paradise:
May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence
Fat frankincense.
Let balme and cassia send their scent
From out thy maiden monument.
* * * * *
May all shie maids at wonted hours
Come forth to strew thy tombe with flowers!
May virgins, when they come to mourn
Male incense burn
Upon thine altar! then return
And leave thee sleeping in thy urn.
I might crowd my pages with extracts from the older British
poets, who wrote when these rites were more prevalent, and
delighted frequently to allude to them; but I have already quoted
more than is necessary. I cannot, however, refrain from giving a
passage from Shakespeare, even though it should appear trite,
which illustrates the emblematical meaning often conveyed in
these floral tributes, and at the same time possesses that magic
of language and appositeness of imagery for which he stands
pre-eminent.
With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine; whom not to slander,
Outsweetened not thy breath.
There is certainly something more affecting in these prompt and
spontaneous offerings of Nature than in the most costly monuments
of art; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and
the tear falls on the grave as affection is binding the osier
round the sod; but pathos expires under the slow labor of the
chisel, and is chilled among the cold conceits of sculptured
marble.
It is greatly to be regretted that a custom so truly elegant and
touching has disappeared from general use, and exists only in the
most remote and insignificant villages. But it seems as if
poetical custom always shuns the walks of cultivated society. In
proportion as people grow polite they cease to be poetical. They
talk of poetry, but they have learnt to check its free impulses,
to distrust its sallying emotions, and to supply its most
affecting and picturesque usages by studied form and pompous
ceremonial. Few pageants can be more stately and frigid than an
English funeral in town. It is made up of show and gloomy parade:
mourning carriages, mourning horses, mourning plumes, and
hireling mourners, who make a mockery of grief. "There is a grave
digged," says Jeremy Taylor, "and a solemn mourning, and a great
talk in the neighborhood, and when the daies are finished, they
shall be, and they shall be remembered no more." The associate in
the gay and crowded city is soon forgotten; the hurrying
succession of new intimates and new pleasures effaces him from
our minds, and the very scenes and circles in which he moved are
incessantly fluctuating. But funerals in the country are solemnly
impressive. The stroke of death makes a wider space in the
village circle, and is an awful event in the tranquil uniformity
of rural life. The passing bell tolls its knell in every ear; it
steals with its pervading melancholy over hill and vale, and
saddens all the landscape.
The fixed and unchanging features of the country also perpetuate
the memory of the friend with whom we once enjoyed them, who was
the companion of our most retired walks, and gave animation to
every lonely scene. His idea is associated with every charm of
Nature; we hear his voice in the echo which he once delighted to
awaken; his spirit haunts the grove which he once frequented; we
think of him in the wild upland solitude or amidst the pensive
beauty of the valley. In the freshness of joyous morning we
remember his beaming smiles and bounding gayety; and when sober
evening returns with its gathering shadows and subduing quiet, we
call to mind many a twilight hour of gentle talk and sweet-souled
melancholy.
Each lonely place shall him restore,
For him the tear be duly shed;
Beloved till life can charm no more,
And mourn'd till pity's self be dead.
Another cause that perpetuates the memory of the deceased in the
country is that the grave is more immediately in sight of the
survivors. They pass it on their way to prayer; it meets their
eyes when their hearts are softened by the exercises of devotion;
they linger about it on the Sabbath, when the mind is disengaged
from worldly cares and most disposed to turn aside from present
pleasures and present loves and to sit down among the solemn
mementos of the past. In North Wales the peasantry kneel and pray
over the graves of their deceased friends for several Sundays
after the interment; and where the tender rite of strewing and
planting flowers is still practised, it is always renewed on
Easter, Whitsuntide, and other festivals, when the season brings
the companion of former festivity more vividly to mind. It is
also invariably performed by the nearest relatives and friends;
no menials nor hirelings are employed, and if a neighbor yields
assistance, it would be deemed an insult to offer compensation.
I have dwelt upon this beautiful rural custom, because as it is
one of the last, so is it one of the holiest, offices of love.
The grave is the ordeal of true affection. It is there that the
divine passion of the soul manifests its superiority to the
instinctive impulse of mere animal attachment. The latter must be
continually refreshed and kept alive by the presence of its
object, but the love that is seated in the soul can live on long
remembrance. The mere inclinations of sense languish and decline
with the charms which excited them, and turn with shuddering
disgust from the dismal precincts of the tomb; but it is thence
that truly spiritual affection rises, purified from every sensual
desire, and returns, like a holy flame, to illumine and sanctify
the heart of the survivor.
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse
to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other
affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to
keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that
perished like a blossom from her arms though every recollection
is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the
most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who,
even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he
mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of
her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed
in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that
must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the
tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its
woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming
burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection,
when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present
ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive
meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who
would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may
sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety,
or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would
exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of
revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song.
There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the
charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every
error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment! From
its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender
recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy,
and not feel a compunctious throb that he should ever have warred
with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him?
But the grave of those we loved--what a place for meditation!
There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of
virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon
us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it
is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful
tenderness, of the parting scene. The bed of death, with all its
stifled griefs--its noiseless attendance--its mute, watchful
assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble,
fluttering, thrilling--oh, how thrilling!--pressure of the hand!
The faint, faltering accents, struggling in death to give one
more assurance of affection! The last fond look of the glazing
eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence!
Ay, go to the grave of buried love and meditate! There settle the
account with thy conscience for every past benefit
unrequited--every past endearment unregarded, of that departed
being who can never-never--never return to be soothed by thy
contrition!
If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul or
a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou
art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured
its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment of thy
kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever
wronged, in thought or word or deed, the spirit that generously
confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one
unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still
beneath thy feet,--then be sure that every unkind look, every
ungracious word, every ungentle action will come thronging back
upon thy memory and knocking dolefully at thy soul: then be sure
that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and
utter the unheard groan and pour the unavailing tear, more deep,
more bitter because unheard and unavailing.
Then weave thy chaplet of flowers and strew the beauties of
Nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst,
with these tender yet futile tributes of regret; but take warning
by the bitterness of this thy contrite affliction over the dead,
and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge
of thy duties to the living.
--------
In writing the preceding article it was not intended to give a
full detail of the funeral customs of the English peasantry, but
merely to furnish a few hints and quotations illustrative of
particular rites, to be appended, by way of note, to another
paper, which has been withheld. The article swelled insensibly
into its present form, and this is mentioned as an apology for so
brief and casual a notice of these usages after they have been
amply and learnedly investigated in other works.
I must observe, also, that I am well aware that this custom of
adorning graves with flowers prevails in other countries besides
England. Indeed, in some it is much more general, and is observed
even by the rich and fashionable; but it is then apt to lose its
simplicity and to degenerate into affectation. Bright, in his
travels in Lower Hungary, tells of monuments of marble and
recesses formed for retirement, with seats placed among bowers of
greenhouse plants, and that the graves generally are covered with
the gayest flowers of the season. He gives a casual picture of
filial piety which I cannot but transcribe; for I trust it is as
useful as it is delightful to illustrate the amiable virtues of
the sex. "When I was at Berlin," says he, "I followed the
celebrated Iffland to the grave. Mingled with some pomp you might
trace much real feeling. In the midst of the ceremony my
attention was attracted by a young woman who stood on a mound of
earth newly covered with turf, which she anxiously protected from
the feet of the passing crowd. It was the tomb of her parent; and
the figure of this affectionate daughter presented a monument
more striking than the most costly work of art."
I will barely add an instance of sepulchral decoration that I
once met with among the mountains of Switzerland. It was at the
village of Gersau, which stands on the borders of the Lake of
Lucerne, at the foot of Mount Rigi. It was once the capital of a
miniature republic shut up between the Alps and the lake, and
accessible on the land side only by footpaths. The whole force of
the republic did not exceed six hundred fighting men, and a few
miles of circumference, scooped out as it were from the bosom of
the mountains, comprised its territory. The village of Gersau
seemed separated from the rest of the world, and retained the
golden simplicity of a purer age. It had a small church, with a
burying-ground adjoining. At the heads of the graves were placed
crosses of wood or iron. On some were affixed miniatures, rudely
executed, but evidently attempts at likenesses of the deceased.
On the crosses were hung chaplets of flowers, some withering
others fresh, as if occasionally renewed. I paused with interest
at this scene: I felt that I was at the source of poetical
description, for these were the beautiful but unaffected
offerings of the heart which poets are fain to record. In a gayer
and more populous place I should have suspected them to have been
suggested by factitious sentiment derived from books; but the
good people of Gersau knew little of books; there was not a novel
nor a love-poem in the village, and I question whether any
peasant of the place dreamt, while he was twining a fresh chaplet
for the grave of his mistress, that he was fulfilling one of the
most fanciful rites of poetical devotion, and that he was
practically a poet.
Washington Irving's short story: Rural Funerals
_
Read next: The Inn Kitchen
Read previous: The Mutability of Literature
Table of content of Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
