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upon that account; and accordingly this colour has, for Mourning, been preferred by most people throughout Europe. The Syrians, Cappadocians, and Armenians use Sky-colour, to denote the place they wish the dead to be in, i.e. the Heavens; the Egyptians yellow, or fillemot, to shew that as Herbs being faded become yellow, so Death is the end of human hope; and the Ethiopians grey, because it resembles the colour of the Earth, which receives the dead." So in Romeo and Juliet we read

"All things, that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black Funeral;
Our Instruments, to melancholy Bells;
Our Wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast;
Our solemn Hymns to sullen Dirges change;
Our bridal Flowers serve for a buried Corse,

And all things change them to their contraries."

Granger, however, mentions that Anne Bullen wore yellow mourning for Catherine of Arragon, and for his authority refers to Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting. The same circumstance is found in Hall's Chronicle, with the addition that Henry wore white mourning for the unfortunate Anne. Crimson would have been a more appropriate colour; nor would it perhaps have lacked precedent, for it is recorded of Galston in Ayrshire (1792), that the women attended the rural funerals, clothed in black or red cloaks.

Hill's Treatise on Dreams (temp. Eliz.) says: "To a sicke person to have or weare on white Garments doothe promyse death, for that dead Bodyes bee caryed foorth in white Clothes. And to weare on a blacke Garmente, it doothe promyse, for the more parte, healthe to a sicke person, for that not dead personnes, but suche as mourne for the deade, do use to be clothed in Blacke."

At the funerals of unmarried persons of both sexes, and of infants, the scarves, hatbands, and gloves given as mourning are white.

In the parish of Llanvetherine in Monmouthshire, according to the Archæologia, the common people tied a dirty cloth about the head when they appeared as chief-mourners at a funeral; and the same custom is said to prevail in various other places.

In England it was formerly the fashion to mourn a twelvemonth for very near relations. Thus Pope

"Grieve for an hour perhaps, then mourn a year."

The ancient Romans, says Dupre's Conformity, employed certain persons, named Designatores, clothed in black, to invite people to funerals, and to carry the coffin. We ourselves have those who wear the same livery and execute the same office; and the Romans moreover had lictors dressed in black, representing mourners with us.

PALL AND UNDER-BEARERS.

The parish, writes Misson of ourselves, "has always three or four Mortuary Cloths of different prices (the handsomest is hired out at five or six crowns) to furnish those who are at the charge of the Interment. These Cloths, which they call Palls, are some of black velvet, others of Cloth with an edge of white Linen or Silk a foot broad, or thereabouts. For a Batchellor, or Maid, or for a Woman that dies in child-bed, the pall is white. This is spread over the Coffin, and is so broad, that the six or eight men in black cloaths that carry the body (upon their shoulders) are quite hid beneath it to their waste; and the corners and sides of it hang down low enough to be born by those (six friends, Men or Women, according to the occasion,) who, according to custom, are invited for that purpose. They generally give black or white Gloves, and black crape Hat-bands, to those that carry the Pall; sometimes, also, white silk scarves."

From Durandus it is evident that something taking the place of the pall with which we now cover the coffin used to be employed from a remote period; and numerous citations made by him from ancient Christian writers attest that the most exalted orders of the clergy thought it not derogatory to their dignity to carry the bier. Thus, at the funeral of Paula, bishops discharged the office of what we should now call under-bearers. How different our present notion of that function! Cervicem feretro subjicientibus, which is the expression of Durandus, indicates that the corpse was carried shoulder-high, as we say; and Walton's Biography of Herbert points to the same fact. Dr Henchman, afterwards Bishop of London, at his ordination (he says) "laid his hand on Mr. Herbert's head, and alas! within less than three years lent his shoulder to carry his dear friend to his grave."

As Sir Thomas Browne observes, the final valediction thrice repeated at the obsequies of the Romans was of a most affecting nature: Vale! Vale! Vale! Nos te ordine quo Natura permittet sequemur;-answering somewhat to the practice of Christians, "who thought it too little if they threw not the earth thrice upon the enterred body."

The burial of an Irish piper is depicted in the Irish Hudibras (1689)

"They mounted him upon a Bier,

Through which the Wattles did appear;
Like Ribbs on either side made fast,
With a white Velvet over cast:

So poor Macshane, Good rest his shoul,
Was after put him in a hole;

In which, with many sighs and scrieches,
They throw his Trouses and his Breeches;
And tattar'd Brogue was after throw,
With a new heel-piece on the toe ;
And Stockins fine as Friez to feel,
Worn out with praying at the heel;

And in his mouth 'gainst he took wherry,
Dropt a white-groat + to pay the Ferry.

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Thus did they make this last hard shift,

To furnish him for a dead-lift."

At Tongue in Sutherlandshire, according to Sinclair (1792), the friends of the deceased and the neighbouring villagers, attending the interment, were drawn up in rank and file by some army veteran appointed to maintain order and give what they termed the word of relief. When he pronounced the direction, the four supporting the bier prepared to quit their posts, and were immediately succeeded by other four. This progression was observed at intervals of five minutes until the whole body of attendants had been utilised; and, in the event of the distance requiring it, a series of these evolutions was gone through. "When the persons present are not inflamed with liquor," writes Sinclair, "there is a profound silence generally observed from the time the corpse has been taken up till the interment is over."

Of the parish of Dundonald in Ayrshire we read that the burials were not well regulated. Though the company were invited at II in the forenoon, they did not all arrive even at 2; and pipes and tobacco were provided for them. This practice, however, has been abandoned. At the words "We commit the body to the ground," it was the mode in North Wales, writes Pennant, for the minister to take up the spade and throw in the first contribution of earth. At Skiviog the bier was carried from the park to the church by the next of kin, husband, brothers, and father-in-law. At every crossway it was laid down and the Lord's Prayer rehearsed, as it also was when they entered the churchyard, introductory of the verses appointed to be read in the service. On its way to the church a little bell was rung in advance of the procession. Further, when a corpse was conveyed from any part of the town, the bearers were careful to see that it was carried so as to be on their right hand, though the way were nearer and it were less trouble to go on the other side; and the south gate of the church was the only entry they would adopt.

If it happened to rain while they were on the way, it was reckoned to bode well for the deceased, his bier being wet with the dew of heaven. In the church the evening service was read together with the office of burial. The minister read from the altar the Lord's prayer, with one of those appointed to be read at the grave. The congregation then offered either upon the altar or upon a little board fixed to its rails, their "benevolence" to the officiating minister, a friend of the deceased being set at the altar to observe the donors and their several gifts. Finally he assisted the minister to count the money, and, proclaiming the sum to the congregation, thanked them for their good will. The Glossary to Kennett's Parochial Antiquities confirms this representation.

THE CUSTOM OF GIVING DOLES AND INVITING THE POOR TO

FUNERALS.

Doles were distributed at funerals, as St Chrysostom informs us, by way of securing rest to the soul of the deceased through propitiation of his Judge. Their distribution and the invitation of the

poor* on these occasions are synonymous terms. Some strong figurative expressions occur in St Ambrose's Funeral Oration on Satyrus, as cited by Durandus. Of the mourners it is said: "The poor also shed their tears, precious and fruitful tears that washed away the sins of the deceased. They let fall floods of redeeming tears." From such passages in early Christian writers, literally interpreted, may have been derived the doctrine of prayers for the dead.

The will of William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, executed in April 1397, directed the daily payment of the sum of twenty-five shillings to three hundred poor people from the time of his death to the depositing of his body in the conventual church of Bustlesham in Hampshire; and similarly we read in Strutt that the body of Sir Robert Knolles, who died at his manor in Norfolk in the eighth year of Henry IV., was conveyed to London in a litter with vast pomp and much torchlight, and buried in Whitefriars' Church, "where was done for him a solemn obsequie, with a great feaste and lyberal dole to the poor." A funeral feast to the chief mourners was, according to Strutt, an institution universally prevalent in the kingdom, as well as the distribution of alms to the poor commensurate with the quality and means of the deceased.

Among the charges at the funeral of Sir John Rudstone, Mayor of London, 1531, occur£ s. d.

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Wakes and doles are customary, writes Hutchinson of Eskdale in Cumberland; "and weddings, christenings, and Funerals are always attended by the Neighbours, sometimes to the amount of a hundred people. The popular diversions are hunting and cockfighting."

The inhabitants of Stathern in Framland Hundred, in Leicestershire (according to Nichols), in 1792, numbered 432, as determined by the last person who carried about bread which was given for dole at a funeral; "a Custom formerly common throughout this part of England, though now fallen much into disuse. The practice was sometimes to bequeath it by Will; but, whether so specified or not, the ceremony was seldom omitted. On such occasions a small Loaf was sent to every person, without any distinction of age or circumstances; and not to receive it was a mark of particular disrespect." +

Pennant deposes to the same effect as to the parish of Whiteford, and generally in Welsh churches; and his reference to North Wales

Pope's will, it will be remembered, directed that poor men should support his pall. The receiving of extreme unction.

Lysons, speaking of some lands said to have been given by two maiden ladies to the parish of Paddington, for the purpose of distributing bread, cheese, and beer, among the inhabitants on the Sunday before Christmas Day, tells us that they are now let at £21 per annum, and that "the bread was formerly thrown from the Church steeple to be scrambled for, and part of it is still distributed in that way."

is that "pence and half-pence (in lieu of little rolls of Bread), which were heretofore, and by some still are, given on these occasions, are now distributed to the poor, who flock in great numbers to the house of the dead before the corpse is brought out. When the corpse is brought out of the house, layd upon the bier and covered, before it be taken up, the next of kin to the deceased, widow, mother, daughter or cousin (never done by a man), gives over the corps to one of the poorest Neighbours three 2d. or four 3d. white Loaves of Bread, or a Cheese with a piece of money stuck in it, and then a new wooden Cup of Drink, which some will require the poor person who receives it immediately to drink a little of. When this is done, the Minister, if present, says the Lord's Prayer, and then they set forward for Church. The things mentioned above as given to a poor Body, are brought upon a large Dish, over the Corpse, and the poor Body returns thanks for them, and blesses God for the happiness of his Friend and Neighbour deceased." This evidently is a relic of Sin-Eating, which has been dwelt upon previously.

In the last century large donations at funerals were made to thei poor of Glasgow. They were never less than £5, and never exceeded ten guineas; for which latter sum the bells of the city were tolled. In Dives and Pauper (1493), we read

Dive's. "What seyst thou of them that wole no solemnyte have in their buryinge, but be putt in erthe anon, and that that shulde be spent aboute the buriyng they bydde that it shulde be yoven to the pore folke blynde and lame? Pauper. Comonly in such prive buriynges ben ful smalle doles and lytel aimes yoven, and in solemne buriynges been grete Doles and moche Almesse yoven for moche pore people come thanne to seke almesse. But whanne it is done prively, fewe wytte therof, and fewe come to axe almesse : for they wote nat whanne ne where, ne whom they shulde axe it. And therefore I leve sikerly that summe fals Executoures that wolde kepe alle to themself, biganne firste this errour and this folye, that wolden make themself riche with ded mennys godes and nat dele to the pore after dedes wylle, as nowe all false Executoures use by Custome."

And in Veron's Huntynge of Purgatory to Death (1561)—

"The auncient Fathers being veri desirous to move their audience unto charitye and almose dedes, did exhorte them to refresh the poore and to give almoses in the Funeralles, & Yeares Myndes of their Frendes & Kynnesfolkss, in stedde of the bankettes that the paynymes & Heathen were wont to make at suche doinges, and in stedde of the Meates that they did bring to their Sepulchres and Graves."

CHURCHYARDS.

It having been a current superstition in heathen times that places of burial were frequently haunted with spectres and apparitions, it is easy to imagine its transmission among the ignorant and unlearned, from the early ages of Christianity to the present day. The ancients believed that the ghosts of departed persons came out of their tombs and sepulchres, and wandered about the place where their remains lay buried. Thus Virgil tells us that Moeris could call the ghosts out

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