Mourners

“ Death lifts them in one heave of the casket. More illuminating are the mourners. Dashing thru the sleet in brief poignancy; shrill, old voices that knew the deceased reciting what can only be the obvious. ”

“ A funeral procession is an imposing spectacle, and, to the uninstructed foreigner, a cheerful one; for there is nothing sad or sombre in the white, or bright-colored, robes of the priests, the white, tinsel-decorated bier, the red and white flags borne aloft, the enormous bunches of gay-colored flowers;—the very mourners in white silk, and with faces apparently unmoved by grief, bring no thought of the object of the procession to the Western mind. ”

“ Death will be an occasion of sorrow to our friends that love us. When man goes to his long home the mourners go about the streets—the real mourners, and those, as now with us, distinguished by their habits as they go along the streets,—the mourners for ceremony, that were hired to weep for the dead, both to express and to excite the real mourning. ”

“ There are few ceremonies in life at once so touching, so impressive, so sad, and yet so beautiful as a soldier’s funeral! Ordinary funerals, with their unwieldy hearses and feathers, and the absurd looking mutes, and the “inky cloaks” and weepers of hired mourners, always seem to me like a mockery of the dead; the appointments border so closely on the grotesque; they are so little in keeping with the true, the only view of death that can render life endurable! ”

“ While you are admiring the flowers and trees a funeral enters the gates. The body is carried by four professional bearers and is followed by two priests and the relatives and friends. All the mourners are clothed in white. They walk two by two, no matter how distant may be the house of death, each couple holding a handkerchief as a symbol of their union in sorrow. When the procession reaches the top of the hill the mourners diverge and take seats in the house of prayer, where the sacred fire is burning, or they seat themselves in the beautiful garden for meditation and prayer. ”

“ Come hither, ye who see
Your blooming babes around you smile,
A blissful company,
And of those childless mourners think
With sympathizing pain,
And sooth them with a Saviour's words,
"Your dead shall rise again." ”

“ Your burials will be, as once were ours, without the toll of holy knells, without tears, sobs, or wailing mourners, without friends, without relations, and you will die transfixed upon the same rock of universal human pain! ”

“ I have read of mourners in ancient days, who clothed themselves in sackcloth, scattered dust upon their heads, ate their bread mingled with ashes, and took up their abode on the bleak mountain tops, reproaching heaven and earth aloud with their misfortunes. ”

“ Till pale faced mourners shall my grave surround,
And many a faithful friend who loveth me,
Shall seek me in the morning, but I shall not be. XXIII.
For my poor heart is often full of grief—
All seems so dark around me. ”

“ I crave their pardon and tell them that, as I take it, ‘tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. And so it is. It’s nature.’
‘Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to the stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not in graves,’ said the child in an earnest voice. ”

“ The mourning coaches, the hearse decorated with plumes, and drawn by horses clothed in black, the hireling mourners, who make a mockery of grief—these may, by their sombrous appearance, throw a momentary gloom over the spirits, but rarely, if ever, produce a deep moral impression on the heart. ”

“ The women here invariably perform the parts of chief mourners; a group of them, with the widow of the deceased at their head, kept up a most mournful cadence, and at every pause in their dismal song slashed their skins with a piece of shell, till their faces, necks, and arms were literally streaming down with blood. ”

“ Some mourners at least have the consolation of mourning real dead—real dead whom they have seen stiffen into death, whose last words they have received, whose last agonies they have tried to soothe, for whom they have done everything they could. ”

“ Again, a funeral always takes my attention and I find myself wondering whether the mourners could be helped or comforted by me, and I note whether the dead is young or old by the funeral trappings, and too often see that it is some tender child, though the grief is as great or greater when it is some dear wife or mother, or may be the father—the stay of some family. ”

“ The lone churchyard is dark and dim,
And the mourners raise a funeral hymn:
“Open, dark grave, and take her;
Though we have loved her so,
Yet we must now forsake her,
Love will no more awake her:
(Oh, bitter woe!)
Open thine arms and take her
To rest below!
“Vain is our mournful weeping,
Her gentle life is o’er ”

“ The dead speak from their coffins—from their very graves—and verily the heart of the true mourner hath ears to hear. Gloves and rings are the valedictories of the dead—their vales, or parting tokens, received by the mourners, at the hand of some surviving friend. ”

“ Then came a funeral—the sheeted corpse on the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of the household—either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners go too long weeping and hungry) —the women behind, tossing their arms and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high. ”

“ Mourn′ing, grieving: lamenting.—n. the act of expressing grief: the dress of mourners, or other tokens of mourning.—ns. Mourn′ing-bride, the sweet scabious; Mourn′ing-cloak, an undertaker's cloak, formerly worn at a funeral; Mourn′ing-coach, a closed carriage for carrying mourners to a funeral; Mourn′ing-dove, the common American turtle-dove.—adv. Mourn′ingly.—ns. Mourn′ing-piece, a picture intended to be a memorial of the dead; Mourn′ing-ring, a ring worn in memorial of a dead person; Mourn′ing-stuff, a lustreless black dress fabric, as crape, cashmere, &c., for making mourning clothes. ”

“ Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even,
Doth half that glory to the sober west,
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
O! let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
And all they foul that thy complexion lack. ”

“ Friends and relatives joined the procession and the demonstrations became the louder. If the deceased person had been of wide repute, many other people went into the line of mourners and hired mourners were employed to increase the lamentations and thereby enlarge the public display of respect to the dead. For seventy-two days the mourning was carried on in the house, lamentations were made, the funeral dirge was sung, all amusements and indulgences were abstained from, and the men allowed their hair and beard to grow. ”

“ And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn. ”

“ A mourner, during the first three days, he does not leave the house of mourning and not to the graveyard. From here and onward, if someone in his neighborhood has a relative die, he follows the funeral bier to go to the graveyard but does not sit with the consolers, but rather in the place of the mourners. ”

“ Those who were left behind, too ill to join the funeral procession, heard not always the returning footsteps of the muffled mourners, for sometimes Death again entered the house while they were absent ”

“ The mourners do not speak nor look up, but sit there like statues, and talk of the dead in solemn phrases and with bated breath, but entering into the minute and sometimes most immodest details. The mourning lasts one or two years for parents, husband or wife, and brothers and sisters ”

“ We now come naturally to the burial of the dead, and the various ceremonies which accompany the time of mourning. Although the relatives seem so careless about the sick person, they really keep a watch, and, as soon as death actually takes place, they announce the fact by loud cries. The women are the principal mourners, and they continue to sob and shriek and moan until they are forced to cease from absolute exhaustion. ”

“ At the funeral of a rich man from sixty to a hundred of these hired mourners are present, wailing and beating their breasts. In cases of real grief it is customary for women of whatever rank to sit unveiled in the dust. ”

“ Hence Mourners in some Cities demean’d themselves after the same manner that in other Countries express’d Joy, and what was esteem’d Rejoycing in some was in others a token of Sorrow: For Example, in some Places it was customary to wear short Hair, where long was a token of Mourning, but in others, where long Hair was in Fashion, Mourners were accustom’d to shave themselves. ”

“ The fact that professional mourners were hired for funeral occasions indicates that mourning was a ritual, not an evidence of sorrow. Moderns may mourn the dead out of respect and because of bereavement, but the ancients did this because of fear. ”

“ The ceremonies of the funeral are performed by the neighbours and cunning men and women of the village, and the old people of the family. The wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters of the dead sit beside him and mourn, in spite of corruption, or even sleep beside the decomposing corpse. “It is genuine grief, a national characteristic. Even after the funeral service, they remember and mourn; and the death of another renews their grief.” The mourners continue their lamentation, heedless of the dancing. ”

“ They shall use all the most solemn expressions of grief; they shall cast dust on their heads, in indignation against themselves, shall wallow themselves in ashes, as having bid a final farewell to all ease and pleasure; they shall make themselves bald (v. 31) , with tearing their hair; and, according to the custom of great mourners, those shall gird themselves with sackcloth who used to wear fine linen, and, instead of merry songs, they shall weep with bitterness of heart. ”

“ Then came, as we imagined, the real mourners of the dead, followed by six exceedingly old women, mourners by profession, and immediately behind them the brass band which had first attracted our attention. The latter, as soon as the procession was fairly in motion, burst forth into a noisy, and by no means melancholy strain, and continued to play for some time ”

“ And what of that ill-fated pun which Lamb, in a moment of deplorable abstraction, let fall at a funeral, to the surprise and consternation of the mourners? Surely a man who could joke at a funeral never meant his pleasantries to be hoarded up for the benefit of an initiated few, but would gladly see them the property20 of all living men; ay, and of all dead men, too, were such a distribution possible. “Damn the age! ”

“ The person who officiates as master of ceremonies, assists the mourners to enter and alight from the carriages. At the cemetery the clergyman or priest walks in advance of the coffin. In towns and villages where the cemetery is near at hand and the procession goes on foot, the men should go with uncovered heads, if the weather permit, the hat being held in the right hand. Guests return to their respective homes after the services at the grave. ”

“ Even her very tears had ceased to flow. Oh! gaze no more, sad soul, towards the west, where stands the house of mourning all behung with funeral crape; nor to the east, upon the grave and house of death. For this one day, turn thy sad gaze away from that drear charnel house where the loved corpse is laid, so that the cool night breeze may fan and wake him from his sleep earlier than if he were shut up within the narrow grave! Yet, no! bereaved one, gaze thy fill on thy beloved one while he still is here, and ere he falls to dust—and steep thy heart deep in the eternal woe. ”

“ A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy features, and grace in the flow of her sable robe. ”

“ We may notice it clearly, perhaps, only when it has a striking occasion: my small boy and the foundered horse; nursemaids at a funeral, inspecting with all the airs of connoisseurs the grief of this mourner and of that; the thrilling summons we all feel, going soberly on our business, when the running crowds tell us there has been an accident. On such occasions we notice with a certain shock human nature's capacity for taking things at their face-value, for liking them as things good in themselves: is that one a good specimen of a mourner? ”

“ Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos of the funeral service, for who is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he has loved to the tomb? But when performed over the remains of innocence and beauty, thus laid low in the bloom of existence, what can be more affecting? At that simple but most solemn consignment of the body to the grave-“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”—the tears of the youthful companions of the deceased flowed unrestrained. ”

“ Tears are as necessary to the afflicted as showers are to the parched earth, and are the best and sweetest remedy for excessive grief.
To the mourner we would say--Weep on; nature requires your tears. They are sent in mercy by Him who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. The man of sorrows himself taught us to weep.
We once heard a very beautiful volatile young lady exclaim, with something very like glee in her look and tone, after reading a letter she had received by the post, with its ominous black bordering and seal--"Grandmamma is dead! We shall have to go into deep mourning. ”