_Curious Monumental Inscriptions._--In the south aisle of Martham
Church, Norfolk, are two slabs, of which one, nearly defaced, bears the
following inscription:
Here Lyeth
The Body of Christo
Burraway, who departed
this Life ye 18 day
of October, Anno Domini
1730.
Aged 59 years.
And there Lyes [pointing hand symbol]
Alice who by hir Life
Was my Sister, my mistres
My mother and my wife.
Dyed Feb. ye 12. 1729.
Aged 76 years.
The following explanation is given of this enigmatical statement.
Christopher Burraway was the fruit of an incestuous connexion between a
father and daughter, and was early placed in the Foundling Hospital,
from whence, when he came of age, he was apprenticed to a farmer. Coming
in after years by chance to Martham, he was hired unwittingly by his own
mother as farm steward, her father (or rather the father of both) being
dead. His conduct proving satisfactory to his mistress she married him
who thus became, successively, mother, sister, mistress, and wife, to
this modern OEdipus. The episode remains to be told. Being discovered by
his wife to be her son, by a peculiar mark on his shoulder, she was so
horror-stricken that she soon after died, he surviving her scarcely four
months. Of the other slab enough remains to show that it covered her
remains; but the registers from 1729 to 1740 are unfortunately missing
so that I cannot trace the family further.