W. T. Vincent

“ Altogether, primitive as they may be, the gravestones of the last century in Ireland, so far as I have seen them, compare favourably with the works of the hedge-mason in England which we have seen in earlier chapters. Even the poor pillar of rough stone, unhewn, ungarnished, and bare as it is, represents an affectionate remembrance of the dead which is full of pathos, and has a refinement in its simplicity which commands our sympathy far above the semi-barbarous engravings of heads and skulls which we have previously pictured. ”

“ I picture now the long and solitary walk across fields and woodlands, with never a soul to tell the way for miles and miles, crossing and recrossing the winding Roden, startling the partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. It is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compass. ”

“ Some gravediggers will tell you that the natural destiny of the gravestone is the grave! They will shew you the old fellows slowly descending into the ground, and they have heard the parson say perhaps that the "trembling of the earth" will in time shake them all inevitably out of sight. ”

“ The one all-prevalent feature everywhere is indicative of the severe piety and self-sacrifice of an age and a people remarkable for one of the simplest professions of faith that has ever existed under the Christian dispensation. The rigid discipline, contempt for form, and sustained humility of the old Covenanters are written deeply in the modest stones which mark the green graves of their faithful dead during a period of fully two hundred years. ”

“ It is earnestly to be hoped that at least equal care is taken of the memorials in burial-grounds which are less ceremoniously closed. Where the work is thoughtfully conceived and discreetly accomplished, much good and little harm is done to a populous place by clearing the ground, laying out footpaths, and planting trees and flowers. But the gravestone, the solemn witness "Sacred to the Memory" of the dead, is a pious trust which demands our respect and protection, at least so long as it is capable of proclaiming its mission. ”

“ There can be no disputing that a churchyard is in its true aspect when [pg 68] it looks like a churchyard, providing it be duly cared for. Some persons of practical ideas will, however, favour such improvements as will banish the least elegant features of the place and range the more sightly ones midst lawns and flowers; while others, still more thorough, will be satisfied with nothing short of sweeping away all traces of the graves, and transforming the whole space at one stroke into a public playground. ”

“ Those which can boast an antiquity greater than that of the common gravestone are very few indeed. It might have been supposed that the sculptured shrine under the roof of the sanctuary, reverently tended and jealously watched, might have stood for a thousand years, while the poor gravestone out in the churchyard, exposed to all weathers and many kinds of danger, would waste away or meet with one of the ordinary fates which attend ill-usage, indifference, or neglect. ”

“ Professor Stuart indeed declares that there is no custom in the history of human progress which serves so much to connect the remote past with the present period as the erection of pillar stones. We meet with it, he says, in the infancy of history, and it is even yet, in some shape or other, the means by which man hopes to hand down his memory to the future. The sculptured tombs of early nations often furnish the only key to their modes of life ”

“ It is true that a stone is only a stone, whatever it may have been used for, but a peculiar sanctity is in most minds associated with the grave, and we ought not to run the risk of shocking tender-hearted people by degrading even the dead memorial of the dead to profane and secular purposes. And yet, what has become in too many cases of the [pg 75] old gravestones? The very old ones we may perhaps account for, but where are the middle-aged ones of the eighteenth century? ”

“ It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. ”

“ It is obvious therefore that the nature of the soil, as it is yielding or impervious, must be a prime factor in the question of survival. It may be granted, however, that our progenitors in selecting their burial-grounds had the same preference for a suitable site as we have in our own day, and, notwithstanding exceptions which seem to shew that the church and not the churchyard was the one thing thought of, the law of a light soil for interments is [pg 65] sufficiently regular to give us an average duration of a gravestone's natural existence. ”

“ The simple Breton people are deeply religious, and their veneration for the dead is intense. They are frequently to be seen—men, women, and children—kneeling on the ground in their churchyards, praying [pg 63] among the graves. It may therefore be well believed that in the period of burial reform which overspread the Continent in the earlier part of the nineteenth century there was great opposition in Brittany to the establishment of remote cemeteries. The thought of burying elsewhere than in the parish churchyard was to the minds of the parishioners a species of impiety. ”

“ This stone, which is one of the least artistic I have met with in Scotland, is an evidence to shew that the rural sculptor was as ready in the north as in the south to blossom forth had he not been checked by the rigours of the Church. At times indeed the mortal passion for a name to live to posterity was too strong to be altogether curbed, as we may see manifested even in the prescribed initials when they are moulded of heroic size, from 8 to 10 inches being no uncommon height. ”

“ The signification of the four balls I am unable to suggest, unless they be connected in some way with the planetary system and point man's insignificance. They appear to emanate from a cloud resting upon the hour-glass, and may help the other emblems in symbolizing time and eternity. The nickering candle is also of doubtful interpretation. It may mean the brevity of life; it can hardly be needed, in the presence of the skull, to indicate death. The candle is sometimes employed alone, occasionally extinguished. At Woolwich there is an instance in which the candle is in the act of being put out. ”

“ They are landmarks of the generations which created them, and records of times and manners which we would fain believe that we have left behind in these days of better education and better thought. They are therefore of value to us as items of history, and, though we would not repeat many of them, we shall preserve them, not only because we reverence the graves of our forefathers, but because they are entitled to our protection as ancient monuments. ”

“ There are books by the score dealing with the marble, alabaster, and other tombs within the churches, there are books of epitaphs and elegies by the hundred, and there are meditations among the graves sufficient to satisfy the most devout and exacting of readers, but the simple gravestone of the churchyard as an object of sculptured interest has I believe found hitherto no student and is still looking for its historian. ”

“ In a short tour through Wales, in 1898, I found very few old headstones. Most of the memorials in the churchyards were constructed of slate, which abundant material is devoted to every conceivable purpose. There is a kind of clay-slate more durable than some of the native stones, and even the poorer slate which perisheth is lasting in comparison with the wooden planks which have been more or less adopted in many burial-places, but can never have been expected to endure more than a few brief years. ”

“ A churchyard is in hopeful case when we see the mounds carefully levelled, the stones set up in serried ranks, and the turf between rolled smooth and trimmed and swept. There is no outrage in levelling the ground. The Christian feeling which clings to the grave, and even to the gravestone, does not attach to the mound of earth which is wrongly called the grave. ”

“ A chat with the village sexton is seldom uninviting, and he can generally point out everything worth your observation. But the faculty of finding that of which you are in search [pg 37] will soon come to you. In the first place, the new portion of a churchyard—there is nearly always a new portion—may be left on one side. You will certainly find no ancient memorials there. In the next place, you may by a little observation pick out the eighteenth-century stones by their shape, which is as a rule much more ornamented and curvilinear than those of later date. ”

“ Hatfield is another instance of preservation without change, none of the old stones having, so far as one can judge, been allowed to sink into the earth, nor, as is too often the case, to heel over, to be then broken up, carted away, or put to pave the church and churchyard. There is quite a collection of primitive and diminutive headstones, carefully ranged against the south wall of Hatfield Church, dating from 1687 to 1700; and the specimens of carving in the older parts of the churchyard are of great number and many designs. ”

“ In entering upon a chapter dealing with "Old Gravestones in Ireland," one is tempted to follow a leading case and sum up the subject in the words: "There are no old gravestones in Ireland." But this would be true only in a sense. Of those primitive and rustic carvings, which are so distinctive of the eighteenth-century memorials in England, I have found an almost entire absence in my holiday-journey ings about Ireland—the churchyards of which I have sampled, wherever opportunity was afforded me, from Belfast and Portrush in the north, down to Killarney and Queenstown in the south. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. PRESERVING THE GRAVESTONES.
Mankind in all ages and in all places has recognized the sanctity of the burial-place. Among the New Zealanders, when they were first revealed to Europeans as savages, the place of interment was tapu, or holy. The wild and warlike Afghanistans have also a profound reverence for their burial-grounds, which they speak of expressively as "cities of the silent." Among the Turks the utmost possible respect is paid to the resting-places of the dead, and nowhere, perhaps (says Mrs. Stone in "God's Acre") , are the burial-places so beautiful. ”

“ It cannot be doubted, alas, that they have in many churchyards been deliberately taken away and destroyed to make room for new ones. Districts comprising many parishes may be pointed out with all their old churches in the midst of their old churchyards, but without one old gravestone standing. The rule and practice have been to quietly remove the relics of the forgotten sires in order to dig new graves for a new generation. ”

“ The great and increasing size of Turkish cemeteries is due to the repugnance of the people to disturbing the soil where once a body has been laid. The Chinese and the inhabitants of the Sunda Isles (says the authority just quoted) seem to vie with each other in the reverence with which they regard the burial-places of their ancestors, which almost invariably occupy the most beautiful and sequestered sites. The graves are usually overgrown with long grasses and luxuriantly flowering plants. ”

“ Even when we find, as we do find, similar, and almost identical, designs in neighbouring churchyards, or in the same churchyard, it is safer to conjecture that a meaner sculptor has copied the earlier work than that the first designer would weaken his inventive character by a replication. The following, which cannot be described as less than a distortion of a worthier model, is to be found in many places, and in such abundance as to suggest a wholesale manufacture. ”

“ In this allegory Time appears to be commanding Death to extinguish the lamp of Life. The sun may mean the brighter life beyond. The building to the right is an enigma.
Often the first six or seven miles have to be encountered before we reach unexplored ground. ”

“ The vainglory of a graven stone to exalt the virtues of imperfect men and women was to them a forbidden thing; the ostentation even of a name carved on a slab was at variance with doctrine; the cravings of a poor humanity to be remembered after death had to be satisfied with bare initials, and initials are all that were written on the gravestones in many thousands of cases, [pg 85] probably ninety per cent, of the whole, throughout the eighteenth century and approximate years. ”

“ In order that no space may be lost between the graves, the shields are used alternately to serve as the dividing wall, and are then drawn out, thus enabling the sexton to pack the coffins close together.
The towns and cities abroad have their cemeteries beyond the outskirts, as is the practice here. Occasionally an old churchyard is to be met with, but never an old gravestone as we know it. Still there are instances in which ancient carvings of the same character have been saved by attachment to the church or churchyard wall. ”

“ Concerning Burial of the Dead, all customs of praying, reading, and singing, both in going to or from the grave, are said to have been greatly abused. The simple direction is therefore given, that when any person departeth this life, let the body upon the day of burial be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for public burial, and there immediately interred without any ceremony. ”