LINGERING CUSTOMS.
Many precious rites
And customs of our rural ancestry
Are gone, or stealing from us.
_Wordsworth._
How rapidly is the fashion of the ancient rural life of England
disappearing! Every one who lived in the country in his youth, and looks
back to that period now, feels how much is lost! How many of the
beautiful old customs, the hearty old customs, the poetical old customs,
are gone! Modern ambition, modern wealth, modern notions of social
proprieties, modern education, are all hewing at the root of the
poetical and picturesque, the simple and cordial in rural life; and what
are they substituting in their stead? We will endeavour, anon, to shew
what they are doing, and what they are leaving undone; just now let us
try to seize on the fluttering apparition of primitive custom, and bid
it a hearty good-bye, before it is gone for ever. I have, in another
place, shewn how all the more fanciful and refined of our village festal
habits have vanished. The May-day dances, and gathering of
May-branches--the scattering of flowers on holiday occasions in village
streets, and about our houses. Even the planting of flowers about the
graves in our village churchyards, once so common in England, is now
rarely to be seen. Camden in his Britannia, and John Evelyn mention that
it was the custom of their times in Surrey, but who in Surrey sees
anything of the kind now?[32] You may meet with a solitary shrub, or
with graves bound down with withes and briars; but nothing of that
general planting of flowering shrubs which you see in Wales. It is the
fate of champaign countries, to have their rustic customs sooner
obliterated than those of mountain regions. The Scotch still retain
their penny-weddings and Halloweens, the Welsh their singular wedding
customs, and funeral customs as singular; but how wonderfully have the
simple customs on these occasions of our English hamlets dwindled in our
days! Washington Irving, in an interesting paper in the Sketch-Book,
speaks of a practice in some villages of hanging up in the churches at
the funeral of a maiden, gloves and garlands cut in paper. In what
church is that done now-a-days? And yet, though I never saw a funeral in
which so beautiful and appropriate a practice was retained, I well
recollect seeing those gloves and garlands hanging in the church of my
native village in Derbyshire; and I have heard my mother say, that in
her younger days she has helped to cut and prepare them for the funeral
of young women of the place. The garlands were originally of actual
flowers--lilies and roses--and the gloves of white kid. For these had
become substituted simple white paper. There was a garland then, of
imitative roses and lilies wreathed round a bow of peeled willow--a pair
of gloves cut in paper, and a white handkerchief of the same material on
which was written some texts of Scripture, or some stanzas of poetry
applicable to the occasion, and to the hope of immortality in the
deceased; and these were not unfrequently chosen for the purpose by the
dying maiden herself. These emblems of purity and evanescent youth were
laid on the coffin during the funeral procession, as the sword and cap
of the soldier on his, and were then suspended in the body of the
church; and there hung, till they fell through time, or till all who had
an interest in the deceased were dead or departed. In all the village
churches into which I have been in various parts of the kingdom, I do
not recollect seeing any of those maiden trophies, except in this one;
and they, on the coming of a new incumbent, were removed in a general
church-cleaning many years ago.
[32] In John Evelyn’s own churchyard at Wootten, there is now not the
least trace of this beautiful custom.
And yet, where is it that our old customs, and the impress of past times
and generations, linger so strongly as about our village churches in
England! Entering one of them in some retired district on a Sunday, you
seem to step back into a past age. The quaint old place--its rude and
ancient pillars and arches--its oaken pews and pulpit, grown almost
black with years; the massy font, the grim, grotesque human heads for
corbels, every one differing from the other, where the mason seems to
have indulged his humorous fancy without regard to the sacred character
of the house in which they were to figure--the contrasting, though often
faded splendour of the squire’s pew; the heavy tombs, with procumbent
effigies of knight and dame--the mural tablets to the memory of departed
rectors; the hatchment in sign of some once important personage gone to
his long home--and the half-worn stones on which you tread,
Where many a holy text around is strewn,
To teach the rustic moralist to die.
And then, the simple congregation! All in their best attire, in cut and
texture guiltless of modern fashion: the clergyman, who with the air of
a gentleman, has probably caught somewhat of the Doric air of the
region; and the old clerk with his long coat, and long hair combed over
his shoulders, doling out his responses with a peculiar twang, to which
an ancient parish clerk can only attain. Then the little music-loft,
with its musicians, consisting of a bass-viol, a bassoon, and hautboy,
and the whole congregation singing with all their heart and soul. These
are remnants of antiquity that are nowhere else to be found. There is a
paper in Blackwood’s Magazine for April 1838, called “Church Music and
other Parochials,” which gives you a picture of things which everybody
who has gone to a thoroughly old-fashioned country church has seen over
and over. The old clerk, the writer says, always reads Cheberims and
Sepherims, and most unequivocally--“I am a Lion to my mother’s
children,” and truly he sometimes looks not unlike one: and when told by
the clergyman that he must take him to task to teach him to read and
give the responses differently, he replies--“Why, sir, if I must read
just like you there wouldn’t be a bit of difference between us.”
Such is the peculiar elocution of the true old parish clerk, that even a
dog is sensible of it. I wandered into a rustic church where I
accidentally saw the congregation collecting, having at my heels a
little favourite spaniel. The church stood in the middle of a field at
some distance from the hamlet, and I did not see where to secure the dog
during the service; I therefore trusted to his general good behaviour,
and made him lie down under the seat. Here he slept very quietly for
some time; but at the very first sound of the clerk’s voice, which was
of the genuine traditional tone, up he jumped and began to bark most
vociferously. I kicked him with my heel; menaced him with look and hand;
set my foot on him; held his mouth--but all was in vain. While the
clergyman, who, I must confess, shewed great forbearance, perceiving
that I was a stranger, and who moreover betrayed by a suppressed smile
that he also perceived the true cause of the dog’s irritation, was
reading the lessons, the dog was perfectly still; again the clerk said,
“amen,” and again up started Fido and barked as loud as ever. The case
was hopeless--nothing remained but to retire.
In some of these rustic temples you sometimes see things that would
electrify a city audience with surprise. I once saw a venerable
clergyman on the edge of Yorkshire perpetrate a pun in the midst of the
service with all gravity. As he was reading the morning lessons, a
fellow who had probably been a little elated over-night, or not
_im_probably the same morning, suddenly cried out--“Arise and
shine!”--The rector paused and said, “Who was that?” “It was Joseph
Twigg, sir,” responded some one. “Then _twig_ him out!” rejoined the
rector, as glibly and yet as gravely as possible. A smile, and indeed a
general display of open mouths and grinning teeth appeared in his
congregation--but Joseph Twigg was twigged out, and the rector went on.
Around these old buildings cling all the ancient superstitions. They are
as much haunted as ever. They are as prolific of stories of ghosts and
apparitions as ever. There are yet young people who go and watch in
those old porches on St. Mark’s-eve to see whom they shall marry, and
will sow hempseed backward at midnight round the whole church for the
same purpose. In many parts of the country none will be buried on the
north side of the church; and accordingly that side of the churchyard is
commonly one unbroken level of greensward, although all the rest be
crowded to excess with graves. The north side of the church, by
immemorial custom, is the allotted portion of the suicide and the
outcast. Accordingly, in many churchyards, that part is purposely very
small. It is in many so little visited, that it is a wilderness, grown
in summer breast-high with mallows, nettles, chervil, elder bushes,
Hemlocks and darnels dank.
The writer of the article in Blackwood’s Magazine just mentioned, says,
“I have often tried to make out the exact ideas the poor people have of
angels--for they talk a great deal about them. The best that I can make
of it is, that they are children, or children’s heads and shoulders
winged, as represented in church paintings, and in plaster-of-Paris on
ceilings. We have a goodly row of them all the length of one ceiling,
and it cost the parish, or rather the then minister, I believe, who
indulged them, no trifle to have the eyes blacked, and nostrils, and a
touch of light red in the cheeks. It is notorious and scriptural, they
think, that the _body_ dies, but nothing being said about the head and
shoulders, they have a sort of belief that they are preserved to
angels--which are no other than dead young children.” There is no doubt
that nearly all the idea which many country people possess of cherubims
and angels is derived from these plaster heads, or from those cherubims
with full-blown cheeks and gilded wings, and those gilded angels with
long trumpets depicted on gravestones. Ministers preach about angels and
spirits as things which everybody comprehends, but which they have no
actual conception of, only as they see them represented by the chisels
and gold-leaf of country masons; and the story of the country fellow who
had shot an owl, and was thus accosted by his wife--“Don’t thee know
what thee hast done? Why, thee hast killed one of ar parson’s
cherabums!” is not so _outré_ as it might appear to many.
But we must leave these superstitions to the winter fireside of the
hamlet. More of the old customs connected with funerals than with any
other events, remain in primitive districts. In Derbyshire, when the
body is laid out, the nurse who attended the deceased, and has performed
this last office, goes round to “bid to the berrin” (funeral). The names
of the parties to be invited are given to her, and away she trudges
from house to house, over hill and dale, sometimes to a considerable
distance. She delivers her message, and names the day and hour.
Refreshments are forthwith set before her. However she may protest that
she wants nothing--can eat nothing--out come, at least, the sweet loaf,
and currant or ginger wine. The family gathers round as she sits, to
hear all particulars of the illness; how it came on; what doctor was
employed; all the progress of the complaint; which leads probably to
whole histories of similar illnesses which _they_ have known,--all the
sayings of the deceased; the end he made, which is generally described
by saying, “he died like a lamb!”--“What sort of a corpse is it?” which
generally is answered by the information, that “he looks just like
himself for all the world--with a most heavenly smile on his
countenance.” All these matters are drunk in with great interest, and
with many solemn wishes that they may all make as comfortable an end.
Some trifle, sixpence or thereabout, is given to the nurse, and on she
trudges to the next place. There is no doubt but that the death of an
individual in one of these rustic places is felt ten times as much by
his acquaintance as that of a citizen by his. The bustle of persons and
events in city life so break down the force of the event, and so much
sooner elbow it out of mind. In the country, the moment a passing bell
is heard to toll, you see every individual all attention; every one
cries “hush.” They stand in the attitude of profound listeners. The
bell, by some signals which they all understand, proclaims to them the
sex, and married or single state of the deceased, and then counts out
his or her age.[33] Having ascertained these particulars, they begin to
speculate, for they already know everybody that is ill in the parish,
and thus generally discover pretty certainly before any other
intelligence reaches them, whose bell it is. That bell is sufficient
text for the discourse of the day. They run over all the biography of
the individual, and bring up many an anecdote of him and his
cotemporaries, which had long slept in their minds. When those invited
to the funeral arrive, a substantial meal is often given, followed by
wine and cake: and besides the customary distribution of scarfs,
hatbands and gloves, a packet of sponge-cake made on purpose, of a
prescriptive size and shape, and called “berrin-cake,” is delivered to
every one before the setting out of the funeral, to take home with him,
wrapped in fine writing paper, and sealed with black wax. Nothing can be
more solemn than the behaviour of all the spectators as the train passes
along the road, all passengers stopping till the funeral is gone by; all
taking off their hats, and watching its onward course in silence. In
some places the old custom of chanting a psalm as they proceed towards
the churchyard is still kept up, and nothing can be more impressive than
the effect of that chant, as it comes mingled with the solemn tolling of
the bell over some neighbouring hill, or along a quiet valley, of a
summer’s evening. When the train reaches the churchyard-gate, it halts,
and if the clergyman be not ready to receive it, the coffin is sometimes
set down upon trestles or chairs, and the company waits till the
clergyman appears. It seems to be looked upon as an established mark of
respect for the clergyman to meet the funeral at the gate, and it is
beautiful to see the serious and unhurried manner in which the country
clergyman of the more pure and primitive districts goes forth to receive
the dead to its resting-place, repeating aloud as he precedes the
funeral to the church, a portion of the service for the occasion.
[33] The fourme of the Trinity was founden in manne, that was Adam our
forefadir, of earth oon personne, and Eve, of Adam, the secunde
persone; and of them both was the third persone. At the deth of a
manne three bellis shulde be ronge, as his knyll, in worscheppe of the
Trinetie; and for a womanne, who was the secunde persone of the
Trinetee, two bellis should be rungen.--_Ancient Homily._
The funeral of the young in the country has something particularly
striking in it--the coffin being borne by six of the deceased’s own age.
That of a young girl is more particularly so--the coffin being covered
with a white pall, the six bearers being dressed in white with white
hoods, the chief mourners in black with black hoods.
Nothing can, in fact, be more widely different in feeling and effect
than town and country funerals. In town a strange corpse passes along,
amid thousands of strangers, and human nature seems shorn of that
interest which it ought, especially in its last stage, to possess. In
the country, every man, woman, and child goes down to the dust amid
those who have known them from their youth, and all miss them from their
place. Nature seems, in its silence to sympathise with the mourners.
The green mound of the rural churchyard opens to receive the slumberer
to a peaceful resting-place, and the yews or lindens which he climbed
when a boy in pursuit of bird’s-nest, moth, or cockchaffer, overshadow,
as it were, with a kindred feeling his grave.
The custom of strewing flowers before the houses at weddings, and on
other occasions of rejoicing, is now nearly gone out, but at Knutsford
in Cheshire, and probably at some few other places, they have a practice
which seems to have sprung out of it. On all joyful occasions they
sprinkle the ground before the houses of all those who are supposed to
sympathise in the gladness, with red sand, and then taking a funnel,
filled with white sand, sprinkle a pattern of flowers on the red ground.
At weddings this is generally accompanied with a stanza or two of
traditionary verse. As
Long may they live,
Happy may they be,
Blest with content,
And from misfortune free.
Long may they live,
Happy may they be;
And blest with a numerous
Pro-ge-ny.
In the north of England a curious practice prevails the first time a
young child is sent out with the nurse. At every house of the parents’
friends, where the nurse calls, it receives an egg and some salt; and in
Northumberland it is so general, that they carry a basket for the
purpose. The child of a friend of ours received from an old lady from
the north, an egg, a penny loaf, and a bunch of matches. The meaning of
which let the wise interpret as they can.
Such customs linger northward more tenaciously than in the south, and
are even too numerous for record here. In various northern counties,
particularly Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, they keep up the
ancient practice of rush-bearing; but instead of carrying rushes to
strew the church floor, as their ancestors did, who had no other floor
to the church, they now chiefly retain the gay garland of flowers
carried by young women, and accompanied by the rustic minstrels. In
Lancashire and Cheshire they still eat Simnel cake on Mid-lent Sunday,
that is, a particular saffron cake, called after Lambert Simnel, who was
a baker, and is supposed to have been famous for it. They _ride
stang_,[34] that is, set a scolding wife on a lean old horse, with the
face to the tail, and parade her through the village with a tremendous
clamour of frying pans, and other noise. They hang bushes at each
others’ doors on May morning which are expressive of each others’
characters. A sort of language _des arbres_ established by antiquity,
expressing either compliment or sincere criticism, as it may be. A
branch of birch signifies a pretty girl; of alder or owler, as they call
it, a scold; of oak, a good woman; of broom, a good housewife: but
gorse, nettles, sawdust, or sycamore, cast the very worst imputations on
a woman’s character, and vary according as she be girl, wife or widow.
These are, it is said, not seldom used by the malicious to blast the
character of the innocent. The girls wear little bags of dragon’s-blood
upon their hearts to inspire their swains with love. They curtsey to the
new moon and turn the money in their pockets, which _ought_ to be
doubled before the moon is old. They shut their eyes when they see a
pie-ball horse, and wish a secret wish, taking care never to see the
same horse again, or it would spoil the charm. With them the dog-rose is
unlucky; if you give one, you will quarrel with the person, however dear
to you; if you form a design near one it will come to nought. A shooting
star is falling love in their eyes; and in their opinion the foxglove is
not like other flowers, it has knowledge; it knows when a spirit passes,
and always bows the head. They have, therefore, a secret awe of it. They
are careful to have money in their pockets when they hear the first note
of the cuckoo, for they will be rich or poor through the year
accordingly. They believe also that whatever they chance to be doing
when they first hear the cuckoo, they will do all the year. They have
the firmest faith that no person can die on a bed in which are the
feathers of pigeons or any wild birds. Such are some of the simple
chains with which ancient superstition bound the minds of our ancestors,
and which education has not yet quite worn asunder.
[34] A stang means a pole, and probably the old custom was to use a
pole instead of a horse.
There is, however, one good custom which the present age has rapidly
obliterated--that of leaving open the country churchyard. In towns,
there is perhaps less attraction to a churchyard in the mass of strange
corpses which are there congregated, and the wilderness of bare flags
which cover them; and there may be more cause for the vigilant
prevention of the violation of the sanctity and decorum of the spot. But
why must the country churchyard be shut up? Why should that generally
picturesque and quiet place be prohibited to the stranger or the
mourner? Some of the churchyards in these kingdoms are amongst the most
romantic and lovely spots within them. What ancient, quiet, delicious
spots have I seen of this kind amongst our mountains, and upon our
coasts! What prospects, landward and seaward, do some of them give! How
sweetly lies the rustic parsonage often along their side; its shrubbery
lawn scarcely separated from the sacred ground. Why should these be
closed? “There have been depredations,” say the authorities. Then let
the beadle see to it; let the offenders be punished; let the parish
school and the minister teach better manners; but let these haunts of
the sad or the meditative, be open to our feet as they were to those of
our fathers. I must confess that I strongly sympathise with my brother,
Richard Howitt, in the feelings expressed in Tait’s Magazine for June
1836. “The yew trees, which adorned, with a solemn gracefulness, the
churchyard of my native place, are cut down; the footpaths across it are
closed; the walls are raised; for stiles, there are gates locked, and
topped with iron spikes. A wider barrier than death is interposed
betwixt the living and the dead. I must confess that I like it not. Why
should man destroy the sanctities of time and nature? Beautiful is the
picture drawn by Crabbe:--
Yes! there are real mourners. I have seen
A fair, sad girl, mild, suffering, and serene;
Attention through the day her duties claimed,
And to be useful as resigned she aimed.
Neatly she dressed, nor vainly seemed to expect
Pity for grief, or pardon for neglect;
But when her wearied parents sank to sleep,
She sought her place to meditate and weep.
* * * * * *
She placed a decent stone his grave above,
Neatly engraved--an offering of her love:
For that she wrought, for that forsook her bed,
Awake alike to duty and the dead.
* * * * * *
Here will she come, and on the grave will sit,
Folding her arms in long abstracted fit;
But if observer pass will take her round,
And careless seem, for she would not be found.
“Where is now the free and uninterrupted admission for such mourners?
Grief is a retiring creature, who ‘would not be found,’ and will not
knock at the door of the constituted authorities for the keys: she will
look lingeringly at the impassable barriers and retire. Easy of access
were churchyards until lately, with their pleasant footpaths, lying,
with the tranquillity of moonlight, in the bosom of towns and villages;
old, simple, and venerable,--trodden, it may be, too frequently by
unthinking feet--but able at all times to impress a feeling of
sacredness--fraught as they were with the solemnities of life and
death--on bosoms not over religious; and now, to a fanciful view, they
seem more the prisons than the resting-places of the dead.”