In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious Part 13

broad, and from 7 to 9 inches thick. It bears an Ogam inscription on two angles of the same face, and debased Roman characters on the front and back. It reads, according to Mr. Brash, in the Ogam, "Saf.a.gguc the son of Cuic;" and, in the Roman, "Fanon the son of Rian."

The three Irish Ogam stones were presented to the British Museum by Colonel A. Lane Fox, F.S.A., who dug them out of an ancient fort at Roovesmore, near Kilcrea, on the Cork Railway, where they were forming the roof of a subterranean chamber. No. 1 cannot be positively deciphered or translated; No. 2 is inscribed to "the son of Falaman,"

who lived in the eighth century, and also to "the son of Erca," one of a family of Kings and Bishops who flourished in the ancient kingdom of Ireland; and No. 3, which is damaged, is supposed to have been dedicated to a Bishop Usaille, about A.D. 454. All the stones came probably from some cemetery in the district in which they were found.

It has been remarked that the distribution of these old stones marks clearly the ancient history of our islands; their frequency or rarity in each case corresponding accurately with the relations existing in remote times between Ireland on the one side, and Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland on the other. Further enquiry into the subject is scarcely to be expected in this rudimentary work.

To seek for the germ of the gravestone is indeed a far quest. Like the _ignis fatuus_, it recedes as we seem to approach it. In the sculpture galleries of the British Museum there are several examples preserved to us from the ancient Empire of a.s.syria, and one described as the "Monolith of Shahnaneser II., King of a.s.syria, B.C. 850," is almost the exact counterpart of the headstones which are in vogue to-day. It stands 5 ft. 6 in. high, is 2 ft. 9 in. wide, and 8 inches thick. Like the Scottish stones of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it is inscribed on both faces.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE REGULATION OF GRAVESTONES.

It has been already pointed out, and is probably well known, that the clergyman of the parish church has possessed from immemorial time the prerogative of refusing to allow in the churchyard under his control any monument, gravestone, design, or epitaph which is, in his opinion, irreverent, indecorous, or in any way unbecoming the solemnity and sanct.i.ty of the place. This authority, wherever exercised, has been subject to the higher jurisdiction of the Diocesan Bishop, and presumably to the rule of the Ecclesiastical Courts; but, as we have seen, the authority has been but indifferently employed, and the inference is that the clergy have in times past been wofully ignorant or lamentably careless as to their powers and obligations. A more healthy system now prevails, and we seldom or never find anything in the way of ornament, emblem, or inscription of an offensive or ridiculous character placed in any of our burial-grounds, the Burial Boards being as strict and watchful over the cemeteries as the rectors and vicars are in the management of the churchyards. Nor has there been, so far as we have gone, any difficulty in reconciling this stringency of supervision with the Acts of Parliament which have been pa.s.sed in recognition of religious equality at the grave; and it is not too much to hope that there is in the present day such universal prevalence of good taste and propriety under the solemnity of death as to ensure concurrence among all sects and parties in securing decorum in all things relating to interments. To the incongruities which have been left to us as legacies from our ancestors we may be indulgent.

They are landmarks of the generations which created them, and records of times and manners which we would fain believe that we have left behind in these days of better education and better thought. They are therefore of value to us as items of history, and, though we would not repeat many of them, we shall preserve them, not only because we reverence the graves of our forefathers, but because they are ent.i.tled to our protection as ancient monuments. However uncouth they may be in design or expression, they must be tolerated for their age. It cannot be denied that some of them try our patience, in the epitaphs even more perhaps than in the carvings, and "merely mock whom they were meant to honour." Two out of a vast number may be selected as painful evidences of a departed century's tombstone ribaldry. The first, from a village near Bath, is a deplorable mixture of piety and profanity, sentiment and vulgarity:

"To the memory of Thomas and Richard Fry, stonemasons, who were crushed to death, Aug. the 25th, 1776, by the slipdown of a wall they were in the act of building. Thomas was 19 and Richard 21 years.

"They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death were not divided.

"Blessed are they that die in the Lord, for their works follow them.

"A sacred Truth: now learn our awful fate.

"Dear Friends, we were first cousins, and what not: To toil as masons was our humble lot.

As just returning from a house of call, The parson bade us set about his wall.

Flush'd with good liquor, cheerfully we strove To place big stones below and big above; We made too quick work--down the fabric came; It crush'd our vitals: people call'd out shame!

But we heard nothing, mute as fish we lay, And shall lie sprawling till the judgment day.

From our misfortune this good moral know-- Never to work too fast nor drink too slow."

The other is at Cray ford, and is as follows:

"Here lieth the body of Peter Isnet, 30 years clerk of this parish. He lived respected as a Pious and a Mirthful Man, and died on his way to church to a.s.sist at a wedding on the 31st day of March 1811, aged 70 years. The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a Tribute to his Long and Faithful Services.

"The age of this clerk was just three score and ten, Nearly half of which time he had sung out _Amen!_ In his youth he was married, like other young men, But his wife died one day, and he chanted _Amen!_ A second he took. She departed: what then?

He married and buried a third, with _Amen!_ Thus his joys and his sorrows were _Treble_, but then, His voice was deep _Ba.s.s_ as he sung out _Amen!_ On the Horn he could blow as well as most men, So his horn was exalted in blowing _Amen!_ But he lost all his wind after Three Score and Ten, And here with Three Wives he waits till again The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out _Amen!_"

The habit of imitation which we have noticed in the masonry of the gravestone is even more p.r.o.nounced in the epitaphs. One of the most familiar verses is that which usually reads:

"Affliction sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain, Till Death did seize and G.o.d did please To ease me of my pain."

These lines, however, have undergone variations out of number, a not infrequent device being to adapt them to circ.u.mstances by such changes as--

"Affliction sore short time I bore," etc.

The same idea has an extended application at the grave of Joseph Crate, who died in 1805, aged 42 years, and is buried at Hendon Churchyard:

"Affliction sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain: My children dear and wife, whose care a.s.suaged my every pain, Are left behind to mourn my fate: Then Christians let them find That pity which their case excites And prove to them most kind."

But the most startling perversion of the original text I saw in the churchyard at Saundersfoot, South Wales, where the stone-carver had evidently had his lesson by dictation, and made many original mistakes, the most notable of which was in the second line:--

"Affliction sore long time I bore, _Anitions_ were in vain," etc.

The following from Hyden, Yorkshire, is remarkable:

"William Strutton, of Padrington, buried 18th May, 1734, aged 97 years, who had by his first wife 28 children, by his second, 17: was own father to 45, grandfather to 86, great-grandfather to 23; in all 154 children."

Witty tombstones, even when they are not vulgar, are always in bad taste. Two well-known instances may suffice--

On Dr. Walker, who wrote a book on English Particles:

"Here lie Walker's Particles."

On Dr. Fuller:

"Here lies Fuller's Earth."

The same misplaced jocularity must be accountable for an enigmatical inscription at St. Andrew's, Worcester, on the tomb of a man who died in 1780, aged 65 years:

"H.L.T.B.O.

R.W.

I.H.O.A.J.R."

This, we are told, should be read as follows:

"Here lyeth the Body of Richard Weston In hope of a Joyful Resurrection."

Rhymed epitaphs have a history almost contemporaneous with that of the old gravestones, having their flourishing period between the middle of the seventeenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century.

They were little used in England prior to the reign of James the First, and it is supposed that Mary, Queen of Scots, brought the custom from France. She is also said to have been an adept at composing epitaphs, and some attributed to her are extant.

It may be suspected also that other inventors have written a vast number of the more or less apocryphal elegies which go to make up the many books of epitaphs which have been published; but this is a point wide of our subject, and we must be careful in our Rambles that we do not go astray.

NOW READY,

In Eighteen One Shilling Parts, or bound in Two handsome Volumes

THE RECORDS OF THE WOOLWICH DISTRICT.

BY W.T. VINCENT,

_President of the Woolwich Antiquarian Society_.