“ The burial of the dead furnishes many instances of curious customs, some of which, with modifications, survive to our own day, while a large number have become entirely obsolete, or meaningless. In the middle ages especially, it naturally followed that a great deal of superstition should be attached to death and burial, and superstition often originated a custom which survived long after any importance was attached to the origin. ”

“ Marriage, in one form or other, is the oldest institution of society, and the source of its most ancient laws. The primitive ceremonies of marriage are of immense number, and many of them have left distinct survivals in modern customs. As regards Christian Europe, in 1085 Hildebrand declared Marriage to be a sacrament of the Church; and, at the Reformation, Calvin declared it to be an institution of God. ”

“ The staff of authority, which we have in so many forms, as sceptre, crosier, mace, wand, or otherwise, has its origin in each case in one of two ideas. Sometimes it is an instrument of correction; thus the churchwarden’s staff, the wand or rod of a royal usher, and of a beadle, and probably also the mace of a mayor, were all, like the fasces of a Roman governor, intended to correct the unruly, or to forcibly clear a way, when necessary, for the progress of the dignitary before whom they were borne. ”

“ Almost in a moment the huge army was transformed into a confused rout of fugitives. As quickly were the waters of the Meiss darkened by the iron ranks of the Hussites as they pressed forward, to fall upon the panic-stricken crusaders with axe and iron-flail, sword and spear, while bullets and arrows were poured incessantly into the flying masses, and the fugitives fell as thick and fast as sere leaves in an autumnal gale. ”

“ At Hatherleigh, a small town in Devonshire, it was the prevalent custom to ring a lively peal on the church bells after a funeral, as elsewhere after a wedding.
Even in the present day, in some remote rural districts, and especially in Hampshire, the practice still prevails of leaving open the outer door of the house, through which the corpse has been carried, until the mourners return from church, and in some places the custom extends also to the windows; this arises from a superstition that if the doors or windows be shut there will certainly be another death in the house within a year. ”

“ In that remote period of way-faring, it was the custom for some churches to have a fire lighted in [Pg 233] an iron framework on the top of an angle turret, to direct the steps of the stranger, especially through those vast woods which covered our land, and of which a famous example existed in the forest of Galtres, in Yorkshire.
The visitor to Gloucester Cathedral will have noticed its exquisite cloisters, and have seen the screens or “carols” where the monkish scribe sat diligently to copy his chronicle, or the artist to illuminate its page. ”

“ In Worcestershire, it is considered that if an engaged couple stand as god-parents to the same child, it is a sure sign that their engagement will never end in marriage. This is clearly a relic of what we have already noticed, the mediæval church law by which those persons who stood in any spiritual relationship to one another were thereby debarred from contracting marriage. ”

“ The fancy probably arose from an idea of the “newness of life” of which the festival speaks to us. Easter eggs again were obviously used at first as supplying a fitting emblem of the Resurrection. As a rule they are simply treated as pretty ornaments, but at Liège, in Belgium, boys have a kind of game with them, similar to an English lad’s use of chestnuts, knocking two together; the boy whose egg remains unbroken the longest being proclaimed the conqueror.
The subject of holy day practices is an immense one, especially when one wanders into all the bye-paths of local peculiarities. ”

“ After the Reformation, in the general decline of ceremonial and symbolism, the pastoral staff and the mitre fell alike into disuse in England, surviving only as senseless decorations, or heraldic additions to the tombs or arms of bishops, who had never used either the one or the other, had perhaps never even seen them. At the present time the use of the crosier has once more become almost universal in the English dioceses, and the added dignity of the mitre promises soon to be scarcely less frequently found. ”

“ Many a grand old Anglo-Saxon prelate found himself called upon as a Christian and a patriot to take his station in the van of the king’s army, to bar the path of the invader, and fence with sword and spear the ancient churches and the fruitful plains of his beloved island. ”

“ It will perhaps surprise some people to know that the custom of placing vases of flowers on the altar, so far from being a modern innovation, is one of the most ancient ways of adorning it. S. Augustine speaks of a young man taking a flower from an altar in an oratory dedicated to S. Stephen; and elsewhere we read of flowers, skilfully interwoven, as a decoration of the altar. ”

“ What was found on the illuminated page, was echoed in the architectural carvings of the time, and the fantastic wood work in some of our cathedrals and many churches, especially in the stalls of Christ Church, Hants, repeat the teachings of the caustic monk in his cloistered seclusion.
It was reserved for the architect-artist to perpetuate in stone the beauties of the floral world, and nothing speaks a stronger though mute language than the foliage sculptured on the arches, doorways, and nooks of our minsters, churches, and abbey ruins. ”

“ The memorial brasses, the incised slabs, and especially the effigies of knights and men-at-arms, which abound in our churches, tell us far more of the successive stages and development of English arms and armour, both of an offensive and defensive character, than all the manuscript inventories or actual collections of weapons that are yet extant. And not only do our churches thus yield the most valuable and trustworthy evidence as to the armour of our forefathers, by its faithful pourtrayal on the memorials of the departed, but they also afford a sanctuary in numerous cases for actual armour. ”

“ So strange a custom, however good the founder’s intention, could scarcely begin, much less take root, and live among us now; when we see on every hand efforts to treat God’s altar-throne with the reverence, and to adorn it with such dignity, as becomes it. And we may surely see in the revived life and widened usefulness of the English Church of to-day, a fulfilment of the Divine promise, “Them that honour Me, I will honour.”
[Pg 167]
The Rood Loft and its Uses. By John T. Page.
The word rood or rod is of Saxon origin, and signifies a cross, or crucifix. ”

“ In all ages, and in all countries, a halo of interest attaches to the marriage ceremony, and formerly, when superstition was so rife in the country, it naturally followed that all sorts of curious customs arose in connection with marriage—customs which, at the time of their inauguration, were full of meaning and real interest, but many of which in process of time, and owing to an altered state of society, have fallen either into oblivion, or become so changed as to be hardly recognisable. ”

“ It is not a little remarkable that the arms of neither shield nor surcoat bear any label or mark of cadency, but are simply royal arms. Mr. St. John Hope ingeniously conjectures that this singular omission can only be accounted for on the supposition that the relics were really those of Edward III., and not of his son, the Black Prince, and that they were hung up over the son’s tomb by the king’s order as a mark of his deep affection. ”

“ In Dalston, Carlisle, there is a belief that if the baptism of a child takes place after it has been “shortened,” the baby will not only be noisy and disagreeable in church during the administration of the sacrament, but will remain bad-tempered and ill-natured for ever afterwards.
The belief still prevails in many rural districts that children dying unbaptized wander in woods and solitudes lamenting their hard fate. In Sweden parents will, therefore, carry a child miles away in the depth of winter to the minister to have it baptized before it is half-a-day old. ”

“ Formerly it was a general custom to erect crosses at the junction of four cross roads, on a place self-consecrated according to the piety of the age; suicides, and notorious bad characters, were frequently buried near to these, not with the notion of indignity, but in a spirit of charity, that, being excluded from holy rites, they, by being buried at cross roads, might be in places next in sanctity to ground actually consecrated.
The practice of placing a pewter plate containing a little salt on a corpse may possibly have originated in salt being considered an emblem of eternity. ”

“ Reference was made above to the survival of heathen customs among us, in a dress more or less Christian; and there can be no doubt that [Pg 26] such is the fittest description of very many holy day practices. Some usage was found in vogue, in itself harmless enough, but allied by long association with the superstitions of paganism. In some cases the mere conservatism of popular feeling kept these alive, after all meaning had died out of them; but in many instances the church took them up, and gave to the dry bones of the heathen custom a soul of Christian meaning. ”

“ Son.—Then is he a Nicholas bishop and an idol, and indeed no better than a painted bishop on a wall: yea, he is, as the prophet saith, ‘A dumb dog, not able to bark;’ he is also, as our Saviour Christ saith ‘Unsavoury salt, worth for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.’ Wo be to those rulers that set such idols and white daubed walls over the flock of Christ, whom he hath purchased with His precious blood! Horrible and great is their damnation.”
At the first blush, any connection with dancing and church attendance or worship may seem profane and impossible ”

“ At the obsequies of persons of distinction, hymns were sung by the attendant priests, who accompanied the body in procession. At this period the body of a deceased person was [Pg 128] always watched by the relatives and friends from the moment of death to the time of burial; the “wake” of the present day being the survival of this custom.
It was a common practice, when the body was embalmed, to take out the heart and bowels, and inter them in a different church to that in which the body was buried; testators sometimes made a request in their wills for this to be done. ”

“ One son has earned himself a name as respected as it is widely known.
His successor was a man of like views, better read, and a kindly-hearted man. But he was less in his parish. Though he kept no curate, he was constantly absent as a “missionary deputation,” and his congregation, who had never been instructed [Pg 269] in church principles, fell away. He died, and his successor, who was only there for a year or two, was, I am told, a failure, greatly owing to weak health; and so we come down to present times. ”