Sickbeds and Funerals
Customs in the Treatment of the Sick--Stately Funeral Processions--The
Funeral of a Poor Man--Unsociableness of the Poor--Wakes and Burial
of the Rich--A "Petrified" Man.
Filipinos are punctilious about many things concerning which we have
passed the extremely punctilious stage. Some of their strictest
observances are in the matters of sickness and death. The sick
have what we would consider a hard time. To begin with, they are
immured in rooms from which, as far as possible, all light and air
are excluded. In a tropical climate, where the breeze is almost
indispensable to comfort, the reader may imagine the result. Then
all their relatives, near and far, flock to see them; they crowd the
apartment, and insist on talking to keep the patient from becoming
_triste_. When the sufferer finds this insupportable and gives up
the struggle to live, the whole clan, out to the last connection,
set about preparing their mourning.
Every woman makes a black dress, and every man ties a band of black
cloth around his white coat sleeve. When there is a wake, it is
noisy enough to be Irish. Our Eastern friends resemble the Irish
also in their love of a fine funeral. To go to the last resting-place
escorted by a band and with all possible ceremony seems to make even
death acceptable to them.
Among the very poor this ambition is quite disproportionate to their
resources. The percentage of infant mortality, owing to poor nutrition,
is especially high; yet babe after babe whose mother unwittingly
starved it to death is given a funeral in which the baby carriage
hearse is preceded by a local band, and hired mourners stalk solemnly
behind the little coffin in place of the mother, who is, in etiquette,
required to remain at home.
In Manila funerals resemble our own, save that the hearse, be it white
for a child or black for an adult, is drawn by stately caparisoned
horses, at the bridles of which stalk men in eighteenth-century court
costumes, which include huge shoe buckles, black silk stockings,
and powdered wigs. The carriages flock behind with little pretence of
order, and at a sharper pace than is customary with us. The populace
are, however, most respectful; rich and poor alike remove their hats
when the funeral _cortege_ is passing.
In the provinces where there are no hearses, a funeral consists
usually of a coffin carried on the shoulders of four men, and
followed by a straggling concourse of mourners. If the corpse be
that of a child, it not infrequently lies, gorgeously dressed,
upon the blue-and-pink-beribboned cushions of a four-wheeled baby
carriage. New-born babes are buried in tiny coffins covered with pink
or blue cambric.
The Filipinos say that when a child dies its pure little soul goes
straight to _gloria_, wherefore it is much to be congratulated on
leaving this abode of sorrow for one of unending happiness, and only
gay music is used at the funeral. The local bands play solely by ear,
and make the most of whatever music they hear sung or whistled on
the streets, with the result that strangely inappropriate selections
are used on these occasions. At the first child's funeral I ever saw,
the band was playing "Hot Time," and a friend to whom I related this
fact, declared that at the first one he ever saw they were playing,
"I don't care if you never come back." This sounds too fortuitously
happy to be true, but it is quite within the possible.
When I had lived in Capiz a year or two, my washerman, or _lavandero_,
died, and his widow, pointing to a numerous progeny, besought for
an advance of five pesos for necessary funeral expenses. She wanted
ten, but I refused to countenance that extravagance. She did not
seem overcome by grief, and her plea of numerous offspring was really
valueless, for, if anything, they were all better off than before. Her
lord had been only a sham washerman, collecting the garments for her
to wash, delivering them, and pocketing the returns, of which he gave
her as small a moiety as would sustain life, and spent the rest on
the cockpit.
Funerals in a country where there are no preservatives take place
very soon. The lavandero died at dawn, his widow made her levy on
me before seven o'clock, and, coming home that afternoon, I met the
funeral in a thickly shaded lane.
Local tradition disapproves of the appearance of near female
relations at a funeral, so the dead man's escort consisted only of
the four bearers, and three small boys, all under eleven years of
age. The coffin was one in general use--rented for the trip to the
cemetery! Once there, the body, wrapped in its _petate_, or sleeping
mat, would be rolled into a shallow grave.
The four bearers were dirty and were chewing betel-nut as they
trudged along under their burden. Behind them came the dead man's son,
apparelled in a pair of blue denim trousers. His body, naked to the
waist, was glistening brown after a bath, and he carried under one
arm a fresh laundered _camisa_, or Chino shirt, of white muslin,
to be put on when he reached the church.
His two supporters were the brothers of my _muchacha_, who lived in
the same yard and who evidently had convictions about standing by a
comrade in misfortune. The elder, a boy of seven, was fairly clean;
but the younger, somewhere between three and five, was clad in a
single low-necked slip of filthy pink cotton, which draped itself at
a coquettish angle across his shoulders, and hung down two or three
inches below his left knee. His smile, which was of a most engaging
nature, occupied so much of his countenance that it was difficult to
find traces of the pride which actually radiated from the other two.
My curiosity was enough to make me turn and follow them to the
church. There the body was deposited on the floor at the rear,
just below a door in the gallery which led to the priest's house, or
_convento_. The bearers squatted on their heels and fell to wrapping up
pieces of betel-nut in lime paste and _buya_ leaf, while a sacristan
went to call the priest. The dead man's son reverently put on his
clean shirt, and the youngest urchin sucked his thumb and continued
to grin at me.
Presently a priest came through the door and leaned over the
gallery, followed by two sacristans, one bearing a censer and the
other a bell. The censer-bearer swung his implement vindictively
in the direction of the corpse, while the other rang a melodious
chime on the bell. At this all the babies fell on their knees. The
priest muttered a few lines of Latin, made the sign of the cross,
and disappeared to another chime of the bells and a last toss of the
censer. The bearers picked up the coffin, and the little procession
went on its way to the cemetery. The ceremony lasted about one minute
and a half, and consumed three out of my five pesos.
This incident illustrates neatly the friendless condition in which
most Filipino poor live. Filipino lower-class people are gregarious,
but not sociable. They are averse to solitary rural life and tend
everywhere to live in villages, but they visit little with each other,
and seem very indifferent to the cordial relations which bind our
own laboring classes together.
In the same yard with the dead lavandero lived at least ten or twelve
other families, yet no one could be found to accompany him to his
grave save two play-mates of his son.
If the poor are fond of display, the rich outvie them. The pomp of a
rich man's obsequies finds its beginning while he is yet on earth, when
the padre goes in state to administer extreme unction. His vehicle, a
gilt coach which looks like the pictures of those of the seventeenth
century, is often preceded by a band, while the priest within is
arrayed in embroidered vestments. When the _surra_, or horse disease,
had made a scarcity of those animals, the padre's gilded equipage had
to be drawn by a cebu, or very small and weary-looking cow, imported
from Indo-China. The spectacle of this yoke animal, the gilt coach,
and the padre in all his vestments was one not to be forgotten.
When the rich man dies, there is generally a wake, noisy enough, as
before stated, to be Irish, and a pretentious funeral. Five o'clock
in the afternoon seems to be a favorite hour for this. In the rainy
season, with sodden clouds hanging low in the sky, with almond trees
dripping down, and the great church starred with candles which do
not illuminate but which dot the gloom, the occasion is lugubrious
indeed. Fresh flowers are little used, but _immortelles_ and set
designs accompanied by long streamers of gilt-lettered ribbon attest
the courtesy of friends.
They bury the dead--that is, all the upper-class dead--in _nichos_,
or ovens, such as are found in the old cemeteries of New Orleans. The
cemetery, which is usually owned, not by the municipality but by the
church, is surrounded by a brick or stone wall six or eight feet high
surmounted by a balustrade of red baked clay in an urn design. The
ovens form their back walls against this, and are arranged in tiers
of four or five, so that the top of the ovens makes a fine promenade
around three sides of the enclosure. In the centre there is generally
a mortuary chapel, where the final words are said. From the chapel
tiled walks lead out to the ovens. The plan is a very pretty one,
and if the cemeteries were kept in good condition, it would be
beautiful. But they are nearly always dirty and neglected.
In the open ground between the chapel and the sides, the poor people
are rolled into graves so shallow that a little digging would soon
exhume the body.
The nichos, or ovens, are rented by the year; if the tenant's surviving
family are not prompt with the annual payment, the body is taken out,
the bones cast ruthlessly over the back fence, and the premises once
more declared vacant.
When we first came, there used to be a great heap of these bones at
the back of the Paco Cemetery in Manila, but so much was said about
them that the Church grew sensitive and removed them. Our cemetery
at Capiz also had its bone heap.
An American negress, a dressmaker who was working for me, told me
that there was a petrified man, an American, in the Paco Cemetery,
and that the body was on exhibition. She had been to see it, and it
was wonderful. I had my doubts about the petrifying, but as I had to
pass the cemetery on leaving her house, I asked the custodian at the
gate if there was such a body there. He said that the body had just
been removed by the city authorities to be placed in the "Cemeterio
del Norte," where there is a plot for paupers. The body was that of
an American, buried in the cemetery five years before. His rent,
five pesos a year, had been prepaid for five years, but his time
had run out. When they came to take out the body, which had been
embalmed, it was found in a remarkable state of preservation. The
custodian said, with an irreligious grin, that in the old days the
condition of the body would have been called a miracle, and a patron
saint would have been made responsible, and all the people would have
come, bearing lighted candles, to do honor to the saint; and he added
regretfully that it was no good in these days. The Americans would
say that it was because of their superior embalming process. "But
what a chance missed!" he said, "and what a pity to let it go
with no demonstration!" There are many ways of looking at the same
thing. I could not help laughing, thinking of the negress. She said,
"He's sittin' up there by the little church, lookin' as handsome as
life--and him petrified!"