Pall (funeral)

“ He got measured for a burial-suit, he drew up his will, he picked out a nice lot in the cemetery and had it fenced in, he joined the church and selected six of the deacons as his pall-bearers; he also requested the choir to sing at the funeral, and he got them to run over a favorite hymn of his to see how it would sound. Then he got Toombs, the undertaker, to knock together a burial-casket with silver-plated handles, and cushions inside, and he instructed the undertaker to use his best hearse, and to buy sixty pairs of black gloves, to be distributed among the mourners. ”

“ This custom continued until the temperance agitation about 1833, and has never been resumed. Funeral customs were different in different places, some inherited from the Dutch, and some from the English. In New York there were as in Massachusetts before the introduction of the hearse, six bearers who relieved each other in carrying the coffin on a bier to the grave, and six others who walked beside the bier, each holding a tassel of the pall or funeral cloth. ”

“ Except in the case of young women, carriages are not sent to bring pall-bearers to the house.
CALLS. After accepting an invitation to act as a pall-bearer, a man should call at the house of the bereaved and leave his card.
A few days after the funeral he should call again and leave his card. If he wishes, he may simply ask at the door after the women of the family.
DRESS. The pall-bearers wear black frock coat, trousers, and waistcoat, a black silk hat with a mourning band, black shoes, and black kid gloves. ”

“ Therefore it is always wise for the women to keep to their rooms until after the funeral.
THE PALL-BEARERS
If a guard of honor is to be appointed, the person in charge should consult the wishes of the immediate family. Those who are asked to serve receive an invitation by note or by messenger, sent either by the head of the family of the deceased or by the person in charge. Relatives are seldom appointed as pall-bearers. A request to serve as pall-bearer should be refused only for the most imperative reasons. ”

“ The one buried that day I had known, or she had known me in my boyhood, and it was expected that I would attend. My mother sent the wreath that belongs,—there is both sense and sentiment in flowers at a funeral when they are wreathed by the hands of those who loved the dead, as is still the custom here; none where they are bought at a florist's and paid for with a growl,—and we stood around the coffin and sang the old hymns, then walked behind it, two by two, men and women, to the grave, singing as we passed through the gate. ”

“ When the distance between the house of the deceased and the cemetery is considerable, a common, perhaps I should say a uniform, practice is, that those friends of the mourning family who reside in the neighbourhood of the burying place assemble in a group at a convenient turning of the road, and wait till the funeral procession reaches the spot; they then silently fall into their places and follow the corpse to the grave. I like the analogy none the less that it is taken, not from a time of mirth, but from a time of weeping. ”

“ In these latter days when over crowded cemeteries and the levelling of graveyards in the midst of our metropolis have called forth the cry of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," by some new means, and some means quicker than the old; when even cremation has come within the bounds of possibility, surely the Parsee mode of burial will commend itself to many foreseeing minds. True that we do not like to think of the vultures hovering around the funeral procession for the last few miles, nor of others awaiting it, perched on, and greedily gazing down into, the tower ”

“ Before they bore the corpse away, they swung it to and fro outside the hut, where it had passed out, chanting the while, “We are leaving to-day; we follow our fellows.” In front of the procession walked a man blowing a reed whistle, while other mourners followed the bier carrying weapons, utensils, trinkets, and offerings to be buried in the grave or laid on the top. Last of all went a woman with a hoe and a basket, into which she dropped various roots growing beside the path which the funeral had followed, and which she had dug up with the hoe. ”

“ In Walking Funerals it is considered a mark of respect for friends to become pall-bearers. In the funerals of young persons, the pall should be borne by their companions, wearing white gloves. It is a pretty and an affecting sight to see the pall over the coffin of a young lady borne by six of her female friends. ”

“ In another way, a funeral pile, made of wood and in the form of an altar, was built up outside the city and near the family burial place. The eyes of the corpse were opened and it was wrapped in a shroud and laid upon the pile. The nearest relative impressed a last kiss upon the lips of the deceased and then with a burning torch and head averted set fire to the pile, the others present raising a conclamatio. While the pile was burning there was thrown upon it incense, perfumes, clothing, ornaments, weapons, and other things, as last presents to the deceased. ”

“ Then, when the red flames cease to shoot upwards and the body is consumed, careful hands reverently gather the ashes and charred bones into the urn and deposit it in the prepared grave. A flat stone being placed above, the mourners perform the last rite in honour of the dead by heaping up stones to form his cairn, which may not be complete at nightfall when men return to the funeral feast. ”

“ Usually on the day following the death, the body is wrapped in a cloth and placed in a candle or soap box, which serves as a coffin, and carried to the cemetery. The procession is accompanied by women who sing, and add to their vocal efforts the music of guitars. The crowd often stops en route to the cemetery to drink and indulge in demonstrations. Women never accompany the funeral procession of an adult. ”

“ Beyond the park through the green foliage could be seen the white palace of the king.
While rambling through the streets we saw a funeral procession. First came many banners and symbols of the Greek Church, carried by church officials; then followed the casket borne by men, the casket open and the pale face of the dead exposed to the gaze of the onlookers; a man came next carrying the lid of the coffin filled with flowers; then priests in black robes, men and [Pg 124] women in black, and girls in white holding wreaths and flowers. ”

“ When the husband dies the friends assemble, prepare the grave, and place the corpse in it, but do not fill it up. The gun, bow and arrows, hatchet and knife are deposited in the grave. Poles are planted at the head and the foot, upon which flags are placed; the grave is then enclosed by pickets driven in the ground. The funeral ceremonies now begin, the widow being the chief mourner. At night and morning she will go to the grave and pour forth the most piteous cries and wailings. ”

“ The funeral was scrupulously held before the second sun went down, and had to be hurried a little, because the morgue authorities, hobbled of red tape, move as slowly as the sea itself in giving up the dead. The coffin—of poorest pine—was knocked to pieces in the grave, before the clods of earth were shoveled in and the doomsday sods laid on. The garments of him who acted as principal mourner were faithfully torn; that is to say, the rabbi cut a careful slit in the lapel of that mourner's waistcoat where it wouldn't show. ”

“ The burial generally takes place the day after death. As many friends as can be present in time attend. Every one brings a present; and the day after the funeral, these presents are all so distributed again as that every one goes away with something in return for what he brought. Formerly, the body was buried without a coffin, except in the cases of chiefs; but now it is quite common to cut off the ends of some canoe belonging to the family, and make a coffin of it. ”

“ Of course, some of these invalids succumb, and from time to time a death occurs; but a funeral is seldom or never seen. When a death happens, the hotel people keep it as long quiet as possible. The authorities take charge of the burial, and the body, which must lie unburied twenty-four hours after death, is removed in a coffin after dark to the mortuary adjoining the cemetery, where the relations assemble usually on the following day, and it is buried. ”

“ Another curious custom, which is now obsolete, was to put cloves, spikenard, fine herbs, and twigs of various aromatic shrubs into the coffin, in memory of the embalming of our Lord. Young girls and unmarried women were buried in white, and had their coffins covered with white flowers. All the people who accompanied the funeral wore white scarves, and before the Reformation, white dresses, and the way was strewn with box leaves, grass, and flowers. ”

“ On the four corners of the great black pall were sprigs of immortelles, and at the head of the casket, a wreath of orange blossoms. The floor of the chamber was of slabs of white marble, skillfully laid and joined together.
At the side of the room, upon a low couch, lay the skeleton of a human being; the grinning skull was turned upon one side, with its yawning, eyeless sockets turned toward the casket in the center of the chamber. ”

“ Recently a testatrix desired her body to be buried in quicklime in an ordinary grave, not a walled grave or a vault, and directed especially that no mourning should be worn and that the funeral service should be as cheerful as possible: another that her children should wear as little black as possible, and not shut themselves up, but go out among friends and to places of amusement. ”

“ And he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
When the bier, with the casket, was set down before the altar, and the chief mourners—the two sons of the deceased, who had followed it—had taken their seats in the rectory pew, then the funeral services, conducted by the curate, went on to their solemn ending.
At the close the parishoniers came out of their pews in an orderly manner, and passing on from the right to the left before the casket, took their last look at the mask of their deceased pastor. ”

“ As the funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloft in the air—or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpse like a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in the house of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarse hymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the little grandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven is sometimes heard to laugh. ”

“ Nothing can be more opportune, when one has to lead a procession through a large crowd at a respectable funeral."
At a short distance from the grave, the clergyman left the cortége and went in a different direction across the cemetery. As soon as he was out of sight of the crowd, he took a short cut over the graves, which in that part of the cemetery were low and overgrown with grass, and every now and then he held up his cassock, and stepped over one which lay in his path. ”

“ These are wooden planks cut in the shape of tombstones and roughly painted. Sometimes they bear also the image of a saint. They are erected—often in a row of thirty and more—on the roadside, in fields and meadows, near chapels and crucifixes, in the village streets—in short, everywhere; they are even nailed to houses and barns. They do not mark burial-places, as might be supposed. As soon as a person has died the corpse is put on a board, and there it lies in state until it is put into the coffin shortly before the funeral. ”

“ A mound is raised over the grave, a stone placed at the head, another at the feet, and a third in the centre. The funeral cortege, composed only of males, then returns to the house, and each member takes a purificatory bath. The red cloths are torn into narrow strips, and a strip handed over as a sacred object to a relative of the deceased. Meanwhile, each relative having on arrival paid a little money to the house people, toddy is purchased, and served to the assembly. The mourners in the house have to fast on the day of the death. ”

“ At the front of the funeral procession walk the noisy, musicless musicians; then come men (they may be friends, they may be coolies) bearing the insignia of the dignity of the dead, if he had any. Next walk more men carrying figures of animals, idols, umbrellas, and blue and white streamers. After them come men carrying pans of perfume. Just before the coffin walk bonzes—Chinese priests. Over the coffin a canopy is usually carried. The casket is borne by about a score of men. Immediately after the coffin walk the children of the deceased. ”

“ Thus, while catafalque seems to signify an ornamental structure, erected in the middle of a church, to support the coffin or the effigy of the dead, whom it is intended to honor—herse, at the present day, is understood to mean a coffin, a bier, a carriage to bear the dead to the tomb, a funeral car, a van, a temporary mausoleum or gravestone. ”

“ Their mourning song consists principally of the sounds represented by the three English notes mi mi, do do, la la; those who attend the funeral are expected to bring some articles to place in the coffin or about the grave as a token of respect for the dead. The articles which I have seen for this purpose have been cloth of some kind; a small piece of cloth is returned by the mourners to the attendants as a token of remembrance. They bury much sooner after death than white persons do, generally as soon as they can obtain a coffin. I know of no other native funeral ceremonies. ”