----“is allowed her virgin crants,[47]
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.”
[47] Garlands.
In addition to the wreath of flowers, a palm-branch is put into a
maiden’s hand; an emblem of victory against the allurements of love,
which many a poor fair conqueror would have willingly exchanged for
a regular defeat. They are dressed in every other respect like nuns,
and the coffin is covered with a black velvet pall, as in all other
funerals.
The preceding passage in Hamlet begins with an allusion to a very
ancient custom, which is still observed in Spain at the monumental
crosses erected on the highways to those who have perished by the
hands of robbers.
“For charitable prayers,
Sherds, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown on her.”
This is literally done by every peasant when passing one of those
rude and melancholy monuments. A heap of stones is always observed
at the foot of the cross; not, however, _instead_ of prayers, as
the passage would seem to imply, but as a tale by which the number
of _Paternosters_ said by the compassionate passengers, might be
reckoned. The antiquity of this _Christianized_ custom appears, from
a passage in the Book of Proverbs, to be very great. The proverb or
sentence, translated as it is in the margin of the English Bible,
runs thus: “As he that putteth a precious stone in a heap, so is he
that giveth honour to a fool.”[48]
[48] Proverbs xxvi. 8.
The Latin version which, you must know, is of great antiquity,
and was made the basis of Jerom’s, about the middle of the fourth
century, renders this proverb in a remarkable manner. _Sicut qui
mittit lapidem in acervum Mercurii; ita qui tribuit insipienti
honorem._ As he that casts a stone on the _heap of Mercury_, &c. &c.
Now, bearing in mind that stones are at this day thrown upon certain
graves in Spain; that, according to the passage in Shakspeare, a
similar custom seems to have prevailed in other parts of Europe; and
that Jerom believed he rendered the spirit of the Hebrew proverb by
translating the word which the English Divines doubted, whether to
construe _a sling_, or _a heap of stones_, by the phrase, _acervus
Mercurii_; a deity, whose statues were frequently placed over
sepulchres among the Romans--bearing all this in mind, I say, it
appears to me that the custom of covering some graves with stones
thrown at random, must have existed in the time of the writer of the
Proverbs. Perhaps I may be allowed to conjecture that it originated
in the punishment of stoning, so common among the Jews; that
passengers flung stones, as a mark of abhorrence, on the heap which
hid the body of the criminal; that the primitive Christians, many of
whom were Jews, followed the same method of shewing their horror of
heathen tombs, till those places came to be known, in Jerom’s time,
by the appellation of _heaps of Mercury_; that modern Christians
applied the same custom to the graves of such as had been deemed
unworthy of consecrated ground; and, finally, that the frequency of
highway robberies and murders in Spain detached the custom from the
idea of crime, and softened a mark of detestation into one of prayer
and intercession for the unfortunate victim.