Graveyard

“ And midway the graveyard lies, with its leaves a-croon,
The only sound of the world, like a dream in sleep.
There’s a white, white grave lies under the graveyard trees,
Hung on the road as a single pearl on a thread,
And silence waits, beast crouched, on the rim of the breeze,
That moans where the only man in the world lies dead. ”

“ Intricate designs stir in the graveyard chaos. Between the head stones and the foot stones the thin earth is raised so that the body may lightly rise to Heaven. (Jackals and dogs, as well as souls, find the shallow graves to their taste.) ”

“ When we fall out of the cradle, we almost fall into the grave, so to speak, and unless we are either very bad or very good, we’re forgotten before the grass commences to sprout above us.”
“A graveyard is a great place surely, for grass to grow and flowers to bloom, and for ghosts to take the fresh air for themselves, but the last place to go for a rest.” ”

“ A graveyard never saddens me. It seems nothing more than one of the flies behind the scenes when the actors have gone on in front. What matters the room where we doff our toggery when we are once out of it? So, not long since, when in rambling about one of the Apostle Islands, away up in Lake Superior country, I ran across a sunshiny little graveyard, and I was glad to loiter about for an hour and read the inscriptions on the age-worn stones. ”

“ Under the shadow of the graveyard cross or the sombre yew the country folk could stop to whisper a prayer. In far-away times, Gregory the Great had taught that it is more profitable to be buried in the churchyard than in the distant cemetery, because, in the former case, the survivors may frequently behold the sepulchres as they enter the sacred building, and may put forth their petitions. ”

“ Will never more return.
[2]
"The Graveyard," sung at the burial of common men.
What man's land is the graveyard?
It is the crowded home of ghosts, —
Wise and foolish shoulder to shoulder.
The King of the Dead claims them all;
Man's fate knows no tarrying. ”

“ But the graveyard itself is never forgotten and never alienated. No matter to what distance the family may have moved, it will never lose touch with the spot where lie the bones of its ancestors—the spot to which its members all expect that their bodies will some day be carried. Year by year one or more members of the family will be sent to carry out the traditional sacrificial ceremonies, to "sweep" the tombs and to see that the ploughs of strangers have not encroached upon the sacred boundaries. ”

“ A graveyard might be called a library of lies. Epitaphs are to be read, and believed, if you can believe them. We have found as big falsehoods in cemeteries as in newspapers. “Say nothing bad of the dead” is kindly counsel, but, say nothing of the dead on a tombstone, is wiser.
We have seen a towering stone covered with words of praise over the ashes of a man, who, while living, was simply a lover of money. We have seen the sunken grave of a woman, with no marble [pg 067] to adorn it, who lived a heroic life of love and duty beyond words to tell. ”

“ The road passed an old church, moss-covered and surrounded by a graveyard, overgrown with shrubbery and filled with the bones of hundreds who once tilled the soil in the locality. Ten years ago an aged man who lived alone not far from the old church and visited the graveyard almost daily to pray over the resting place of some relative was foully murdered for the store of gold he was supposed to have hidden about his hermit abode. ”

“ The graveyard is one of the oddest in the kingdom, presenting long rows of huge tombstones, twelve or fifteen feet high, usually painted of a muddy cream color, each one serving for an entire family, and recording the trades or professions as well as the names and ages of the deceased. ”

“ Within the graveyard itself the good influences are not supposed to concentrate themselves solely and permanently on one spot; if that were so, the first people to die after the selection of the graveyard would obviously get all the best positions. ”

“ Driggs looked thoughtfully about the untidy graveyard.
“It would seem as though ‘out of sight is out of mind’ in many cases of old graveyards, Carolyn May. Yes, you are right. Families move away or die out entirely. The burial lots are left to the mercy of strangers. ”

“ The choice of such a soil, especially with the instruments they possessed, may, perhaps, show the importance which the Britons attached to the rite of burial.
About a quarter of a mile, or rather less, from this great graveyard lay a solitary mound, two feet and a half in height, having a circumference of twenty-seven feet, a very common measurement, but without any trench. Upon digging into it on the east side we quickly came, about four inches from the surface, upon a patch of charcoal and burnt earth. ”

“ The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it. ”

“ He fixes the position for a burying place, and the way a grave will face. Traffic in the vicinity of the grave is stopped lest the spirit be disturbed. It is reckoned very unlucky to tread on or through a family graveyard. ”

“ Death possesses a good deal of real estate, namely, the graveyards in every town. ”

“ I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white Through the pale dusk of the impending night; O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; We give to each a tender thought, and pass Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass, Unto these scenes frequented by our feet When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. ”

“ If the men intended going to a certain grave at night, late in the afternoon a woman, in deep mourning, would walk round the part of the cemetery in which the grave was situated, and contrive to detach the wires from the guns. Loose stones were placed on the walls of the grave-yard, so as to make scaling the walls almost an impossibility; this [Pg 76] was useless when the custodian had a house with a window looking into the burial-place. ”

“ I do not want to see tombs—not your tombs. Why should I? We have graves of our own, our family has. Why my uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee-pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want graves, it is to those places that I go and revel. ”

“ THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses—sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in perfect order. ”

“ The burial-ground is near. About a dozen of us follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and stumbling over the graves. Here we are at the wall, and here is the long ditch, always open, which every day is prolonged a little to the right, and filled in a little to the left. Here is the line of white crosses, and the flickering shadows on the wall caused by the lantern.
The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, and lower the body, disputing in undertones, for it is not so easy as one might think to be a grave-digger. One must have the knack of it. ”

“ The graves are neatly bordered with grass, and planted with flowers, and many of the crosses have withered wreathes hanging upon them. In summer it is a beautiful place; in fact, the very name of cemetery in German—Friedhuf or Court of Peace—takes away the idea of death; the beautiful figure of the youth, with his inverted torch, makes one think of the grave only us a place of repose. ”

“ Friends and relatives often placed objects on the newly-made grave, such as a flower or an oyster-shell, so that they might be able to tell if the earth had been disturbed. These objects were generally carefully noted by the resurrection-men, and were put back in their exact places after the body had been removed and the grave re-filled.
In some burial-grounds, houses were built in which the bodies could be kept until they were putrid, and therefore useless to the resurrection-men. Such a house is still standing in the burial-ground at Crail. ”

“ Sometimes, instead of a grave suitable for a single body, the excavation is made deep enough into the rock to admit of two, three, or four bodies being placed side by side,--family graves. And sometimes, instead of the simple _loculus_, or coffin-like excavation, there is an arch cut out of the tufa, and sunk back over the whole depth of the grave, the outer side of which is not cut away, so that, instead of being closed in front by a perpendicular slab of marble or by tiles, it is covered on the top by a horizontal slab. ”

“ Here and there, among the earth-brown graves, stooping above them, are the earth-brown figures of the gardeners. Every grave is freshly raked, moulded between wooden frames to a flat, high surface where the flowers are to overflow, and above every raised daïs of earth the bleached wood of the cross spreads its arms, throwing a shadow soft and blue like a dove's feather, a shadow that curves over the mound and laps down its edge lightly as a benison. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These lowly burial-places, for which art has done nothing, are not without a fascination, and in some hours of life they take a faster hold on the sentiments than more imposing cemeteries, adorned with shafts of marble and granite, and rich in illustrious dead. ”

“ The almost imperceptible shading-off of winter into spring is signaled by tufts of freshly springing grass on the sunny side of a grave-stone; the birds build betimes among the tree-branches of the cemetery. Your grave-maker is always a merry fellow, who cares no more for carved cross-bones than for the clay-pipes so artistically crossed in shop-windows. ”

“ Grotesque graves dot the hills or stand up against the sky-line: pyramidal graves, tumulus graves, rock graves,—everywhere, graves. And, occasionally, as the boat rounds a rocky point, one sees a deserted city up above,—houses, walls, battlements, with the sun shining through the empty window squares. ”

“ It was buried in full dress, and surrounded by a number of articles pertaining to the deceased—both personal ornaments, domestic instruments and vessels, and other things—and that had been used or valued by him or her. Sometimes the body was enclosed in a wooden chest or coffin before being placed in the grave. The grave, in either of these cases, was then filled in—usually with a tempered or “puddled” earth, which formed a close and extremely compact mass—and the mound raised over it. ”

“ When the corpse has been laid to rest, the grave is covered with logs, planks, bundles of reeds, or stones. It is not filled with earth, but a mound is heaped up on the top of the covering and decorated with flags or the like, unless when a dome-like structure of wood or bricks is built over the grave. When a child dies its cradle is laid upon its grave. After the burial the mollah pronounces a blessing over the corpse for the last time, and all take part in heaping up the mound of earth. ”

“ Its greatest curiosity is a cemetery, which is filled to its utmost capacity and overflows into the street. The head-stones are crowded together and invade and submerge one another, as if the corpses were uncomfortable in their graves and had lifted up their shoulders to escape from them. It suggests a petrified ocean, the tombs being the waves, and the crosses the masts of shipwrecked vessels.
In the middle, an open ossuary contains skeletons that have been exhumed in order to make room for other corpses. Who has said: "Life is a hostelry, and the grave is our home?" ”

“ Each Family has a particular [250] Part, walled in like a garden, where the Bones of their Ancestors have remained undisturbed for many generations. The Graves are all distinct and separate, and the space between as planted with Beautiful Flowers, bordered round with Stone, or paved over with Tiles. The Graves of the Great People are likewise distinguished by Square Rooms with Cupolas built over them, which, being kept constantly clean, whitewashed, and beautified, nevertheless continue like the hypocrites, and are but Sepulchres full within of nothing but Dead Men's Bones. ”

“ Parties of young men sit and “watch” the body, at the same time chaunting the most melancholy dirges. Early the next morning the preparations for the funeral and the funeral feast commence. Two go to dig the grave, others paint and dress the body, while others prepare the oven, and attend to culinary matters. The two grave diggers seated opposite each other make three feints with their digging sticks, which are then stuck into the earth, and a grave rarely more than three feet deep is prepared. ”