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.