Lay a garland on my hearse
The leaf of eglantine; whom not to slander,
And with my tears as showers
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 ?nished, 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 ?uctuating. 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.
There is also a solemn respect paid by the traveller to the passing funeral in these sequestered places; for such spectacles, occurring amongthe 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.
In Glamorganshire, we are told, the bed whereon the corpse lies is covered with ?owers, a custom alluded to in one of the wild and plaintive ditties of Ophelia:
Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,
From out thy maiden monument.
On it I will bestow;
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, puri?ed from every sensual desire, and returns, like a holy ?ame, to illumine and sanctify the heart of the survivor.
Lightly, gentle earth.
Let balme and cassia send their scent
The altar of our love, thy stone.
May all shie maids at wonted hours
I have dwelt upon this beautiful rural custom, because as it is one of the last, so is it one of the holiest, of?ces of love.
osiers were carefully bent over them to keep the turf uninjured, and about them were planted evergreens and ?owers. "We adorn their graves," says Evelyn, in his Sylva, "with ?owers andredolent 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.
Herrick, also, in his "Dirge of Jephtha," pours forth a fragrant ?ow of poetical thought and image, which in a manner embalms the dead in the recollections of the living.
To bury lovers in; and made her maids
And as we sing thy dirge, we will,
Ill deck her tomb with ?owers
Are strewings ?ttst for graves----
Or growth from such unhappy earth.
From my hour of birth;
Come forth to strew thy tombe with ?owers!
I must observe, also, that I am well aware that this custom of adorning graves with ?owers 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 ?owers of the season. He gives a casual picture of ?lial 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 If?and 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 ?gure of this affectionate daughter presented a monument more striking than the most costly work of art."
Upon my dismall grave
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 ?owers 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 ?owers, 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.
Male incense burn
Heres a few ?owers! but about midnight more:
And sundry-colored ribbons
--------
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 ?owers, which, as soon as the body was interred, they stuck about the grave.
With her to grave shall go.
Such offerings as you have,
CYMBELINE.
But chie?y blacke and yellowe
Thus, thus, and thus, we compass round
He noticed several graves which had been decorated in the same manner. As the ?owers 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.
Thy harmless and unhaunted ground,
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 ?owers were strewn, they were of the most melancholy colors.
Beloved till life can charm no more,
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."
Ill keep them fresh and green.
Her servants, what a pretty place it were
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 ?nished 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.
Ill sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
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 insigni?cant 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:
These herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
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 ?ower 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.
Bluck em, and strew her over like a corse.
Stuck full of ?owers, she, with a sigh, will tell
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 sti?ed griefs--its noiseless attendance--its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, ?uttering, thrilling--oh, how thrilling!--pressure of the hand!
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 ?ghting 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 af?xed miniatures, rudely executed, but evidently attempts at likenesses of the deceased.
For him the tear be duly shed;
The rarest ever seen;
My love was false, but I was ?rm,
Outsweetened not thy breath.
Yet strew
The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor
May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence
And mournd till pitys self be dead.
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 ?oral tributes, and at the same time possesses that magic of language and appositeness of imagery for which he stands pre-eminent.
And make this place all Paradise:
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
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.
Of the dismall yew,
And from her fair and unpolluted ?esh
A garland shall be framed
You were as ?owers now withered; even so
Say I died true.
The ?ower thats like thy face, pale primrose; nor
But the grave of those we loved--what a place for meditation!
Upon thine altar! then return
AMONG the beautiful and simple-hearted customs of rural life which still linger in some parts of England are those of strewing ?owers 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.
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."
On the crosses were hung chaplets of ?owers, 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 ful?lling one of the most fanciful rites of poetical devotion, and that he was practically a poet.
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!
And leave thee sleeping in thy urn.
The herbs that have oil them cold dew o the night
Larded all with sweet ?owers;
HERRICK.
Forsaken cypresse and yewe;
Upon my buried body lie
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?
In The Maids Tragedy, a pathetic little air, is introduced, illustrative of this mode of decorating the funerals of females who had been disappointed in love:
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 ?ower," 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 ?owers, 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 "Corydons Doleful Knell," a lover speci?es the decorations he intends to use:
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 ?owers 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.
The ?xed 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.
The rich vein of melancholy which runs through the English character, and gives it some of its most touching and ennobling graces, is ?nely 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 ?owers 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 Maids Tragedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a beautiful instance of the kind describing the capricious melancholy of a broken-hearted girl:
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.
In token of good-will.
Ay, go to the grave of buried love and meditate! There settle the account with thy conscience for every past bene?t unrequited--every past endearment unregarded, of that departed being who can never-never--never return to be soothed by thy contrition!
White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Of sundry-colored ?owers,
Fat frankincense.
Each lonely place shall him restore,
With true love showers.
The custom of decorating graves was once universally prevalent:
Thus, in poems by Thomas Stanley, Esq. (published in 1651), is the following stanza:
Then weave thy chaplet of ?owers 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 af?iction over the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living.
May virgins, when they come to mourn
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 af?iction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this af?iction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
By art and natures skill,
Which be-wept to the grave did go,
When she sees a bank
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 con?ded 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.
The daffodill
For kinder ?owers can take no birth
With fairest ?owers,
May violets spring.
And other ?owers lay upon
Maidens, willow branches wear,
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to re?ne 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 ?owers 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 re?ned associations which it awakened when blooming before us in youth and beauty. "Lay her i the earth," says Laertes, of his virgin sister,
