(Vol. iii., p. 408.)
The origin of this ceremony must undoubtedly be sought in man's natural
desire to cover a dead body from the public view. The casting a handful
of soil on the coffin is emblematic of the complete inhumation. The most
ancient writings have allusions to the shamefulness of a corpse lying
uninterred. Being thrown outside the walls of Jerusalem, with the burial
of an ass (Jeremiah xxii. 19.), was regarded as the worst possible fate.
Wheatly's observations upon this point, in his annotations on the burial
service in the Prayer Book, are as follows:
"The casting earth upon the body was esteemed an act of piety by
the very heathens (Ælian, _Var. Hist._, l. v. c. 14.), insomuch
that to find a body unburied, and leave it uncovered, was judged
amongst them a great crime (Hor. l. i. od. 28. v. 36.). In the
Greek Church this has been accounted so essential to the
solemnity, that it is ordered to be done by the priest himself
(Goar, _Eucholog. Offic. Exeq._, p. 538.); and the same was
enjoined by our own rubric in the first Common Prayer of King
Edward VI.: '_Then the priest casting earth upon the corpse_,' &c.
But in our present Liturgy (as altered in Queen Elizabeth's reign,
1559), it is only ordered that it '_shall be cast upon the body by
some standing by_:' and so it is generally left to one of the
bearers, or sexton, who, according to Horace's description
(_injecto ter pulvere_, vid. supra), gives three casts of earth
upon the body or coffin, whilst the priest pronounces the solemn
form which explains the ceremony, viz. '_earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust._'"
The note in Horace upon the three words above quoted is very much to the
point:
"_In sacris hoc genus sepulturæ tradebatur, ut si non obrueretur,
manu ter jacta terra, cadaveri pro sepultura esset._" (Vet.
Schol.)
The ancients thought that the spirit of an unburied corpse could not
reach the Elysian fields, but wandered disconsolate by the Styx, until
some pious hand paid the customary funeral rites. See the case of
Patroclus (_Iliad_, xxiii. 70, et seq.). To lay the unquiet ghost, a
handful of earth on the bodily remains would suffice:
"_Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent._"
The indignity of a public execution is much aggravated by allowing the
body of the criminal to remain exposed, as in the case of the five sons
of Saul whose corpses were guarded by Rizpah (2 Sam. xxi.); and in our
own recent custom of ordering pirates and the worst kind of murderers,
to be gibbeted in chains, as a monumental warning.
Three or four summers ago I buried an Irish reaper, who had suddenly
died in the harvest-fields. About half a dozen fellow-labourers, Irish
and Roman Catholics like himself, bore him to the grave. At the words
_earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust_, they threw in handfuls
of soil; and, as soon as the service was over, they filled up the grave
with spades which they had brought for the purpose. No doubt, there was
religious prejudice in all this; but their behaviour was most reverent,
and what they did seemed to arise from the generous _instinct to cover
the dead body_ of a comrade.
Alfred Gatty.
_Wheatly on the Common Prayer_ (ch. xii. §5.) derives this custom from
the ancients, and adds that--
"In the Greek Church, the casting earth upon the body has been
accounted so essential to the solemnity, that it is ordered to be
done by the priest himself. And the same was enjoined by our own
rubric in the first Common Prayer of King Edward VI."
For the Greek Church Wheatly refers to Goar _Rituale Græcorum_, p. 538.
The passage, which I transcribe from Goar, runs as follows:--
"Et cadaver in monumento deponitur. Sacerdos vero terram batillo
tollens superinjecit cadaveri, dicens, 'Domini est terra et
plenitudo ejus: orbis terrarum et qui habitant in eo.' His
peractis cadaveri superinfundunt lampadis oleum, aut e thuribulo
cinerem. Atque ita ut moris est, sepulchrum operiunt dum dicuntur
moduli," &c.
The following reference may also be added, Goar, 556., "Officium funeris
monachorum," where the earth is directed to be thrown "in crucis modum."