Shroud

“ Unwrapped, I say, Marcus. Note that. For here the theory of a desecrated tomb halted abruptly. What body thieves would pause to remove the shroud? Would they not, fearful of discovery, snatch the corpse and make off with it swiftly in a frenzy of terror? However it might be desirable to lighten the body of this round hundred pounds of spices. So my grave-robbing theory got upon its legs and limped on a few paces, only to receive its death-blow as I looked upon the shroud itself, composed of strips of linen cloth, and folded in a pile, I swear to you, Marcus, as a woman might have done it. ”

“ The count had laid down his burden; the old woman and he took it up together, swung it for a moment over the edge of the precipice, then the long shroud floated over the abyss, and the imaginary murderers in silence bent forward to see it fall.
That long white sheet floating in the air is still present before my eyes. It descends, it falls like a wild swan shot in the clouds, spreading its wide wings, the long neck thrown back, whirling down to earth to die. ”

“ A shroud is used to wrap round a dead body, a corpse, whose elements, since they are no longer maintained united by the undefinable principle of life, go to form other compounds,—more permanent and lasting,—which will mingle with the earth, the water, and the air. But the earth which the snow covers preserves, on the contrary, the germ of life in the seeds and roots of plants; it rests itself, only for the purpose of communicating, at the return of spring, a new impulse to the sap, whose circulation sleeps during winter. ”

“ A shroud whose dead-eye is turned in end up will bear a fairer strain, but is more dependent on the seizings; the under turns of the throat are the first to break and the others the first to slip. With the cutter-stay fashion the standing part of the shroud gives way under the nip of the eye. A rope will afford the greatest resistance to strain when secured round large thimbles with a straight end and a sufficient number of flat or racking seizings. To splice shrouds round dead-eyes is objectionable on account of opening the strands and admitting water, thus hastening decay. ”

“ Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. ”

“ When you come into the house where the youngsters were killed, pour some live coals into a pot and put the piece of the shroud in with them, and then lock the door. The lads will be revived by the smoke immediately.”
The moujik cut off the left skirt of the shroud, and gave up the coffin-lid. The corpse went to its grave—the grave opened. But just as the dead man was descending into it, all of a sudden the cocks began to crow, and he hadn’t time to get properly covered over. One end of the coffin-lid remained sticking out of the ground. ”

“ When a shroud is perceived about one, it is a sure prognostic of death; the time is judged according to the height of it about the person; for if it be not seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the space of a year, and perhaps some months longer; and as it is frequently seen to ascend higher towards the head, death is concluded to be at hand in a few days, if not hours, as daily experience confirms. ”

“ And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom,
Shine like jewels in a shroud. ”

“ On the death of one of the Indians, the body is wrapped in a cotton shroud, and, after a short ceremony with a funeral oration, is borne to a solitary place in the forest, where it is laid upon a kind of scaffold covered with branches of trees, and left for a year. ”

“ But now the grey shroud which hid from view the remains of the glow and glitter of her ancient splendour has to some extent been withdrawn, and through the labours of a band of scholars and explorers whose lives and work must be classed as among the most romantic passages in the history of human effort we are now enabled to view the wondrous panorama of human civilization as it evolved in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. ”

“ The Shroud-theft is a product of the peculiar fascination exercised by the human skeleton upon the mediæval fancy. The part played by the skeleton in the early art and early fiction of the Christian æra is one of large importance; the horrible, the grotesque, the pathetic, the humorous—all are grouped round the bare remnants of humanity. The skeleton, figuring as Death, still looks at you from the façades of the village churches in the north of Italy and the Trentino—sometimes alone, sometimes with other stray members of the Danse Macabre ”

“ The prepared leathern skin is double, and has been wrapped entirely round the body, like the bandages of a mummy; it is laced across the breast, and stitched with a strong leathern thong entirely up the back from the neck to the heels, and along the soles of the feet. It has been removed to the Dunfermline Museum, where it is preserved suspended in a glass case—in some respects a more eloquent memento mori than the Egyptian's "imperishable type of evanescence:" a shroud which has escaped the mortality of the corpse within its folds. ”

“ If it is a young girl, she lies in a white shroud, and on her head is a wreath of flowers; if it is a grown-up female, she usually wears a coloured dress; that of aged women is black. A male corpse lies in a shroud and Phrygian cap, resembling thus the Etruscan dead, as they may be seen, surrounded with mourners, in representations contained in the Etrurian Museum of the Vatican. ”

“ And clatter and rattle of bones you might hear,
⁠As of one beating sticks to a measure.
This seems to the warder a laughable game:
Then the tempter, low whispering, up to him came:
⁠"In one of their shrouds go and wrap thee."
'Twas done soon as said; then he gained in wild flight
⁠Concealment behind the church portal,
The moon all the while throws her bright beams of light
⁠On the dance where they revel and sport all.
First one, then another, dispersed all are they,
And donning their shrouds steal the spectres away,
⁠And under the graves all is quiet. ”

“ At last a horrible suspicion flashed across his mind, and he started up with a frantic air. “Yes!” he exclaimed, looking wildly round his dungeon, and shuddering as he spoke—“Yes! it must be so! I see it!—I feel the maddening truth like scorching flames upon my brain! Eternal God!—support me! It must be so!—Yes, yes, that is to be my fate! Yon roof will descend!—these walls will hem me round—and slowly, slowly, crush me in their iron arms! Lord God! look down upon me, and in mercy strike me with instant death! ”

“ The horizon is lost in a grey mist. All is vastness; the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a "brool" over the sea that sounds like some presage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem "men like trees walking." The fishing-boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers. ”

“ Through the still white of her face, which made her look as cold as the wet marble she stood on, her dark eyes seemed to gleam with a strange but enticing lustre. Even in the unsearching moonlight, which is after all rather deceptive than illuminative, I could not but notice one rare quality of her eyes. Each had some quality of refraction which made it look as though it contained a star. At every movement she made, the stars exhibited new beauties, of more rare and radiant force. She looked at me imploringly as the heavy curtain rolled back, and in eloquent gestures implored me to admit her. ”

“ How could anyone believe for a moment that such sweet breath could come from the lips of the dead—the dead in esse or in posse—that corruption could send forth fragrance so sweet and pure? It was with satisfied happiness that, as I looked at her from my stool, I saw the dancing of the flames from the beech-logs reflected in her glorious black eyes, and the stars that were hidden in them shine out with new colours and new lustre as they gleamed, rising and falling like hopes and fears. ”

“ As the weasel caught a whiff of the pungent, evil odor of the shrew’s fur, he drew aside, his lips curled back over his sharp teeth in a grimace of disgust, and the masked beastling passed unscathed. At a little cove by the edge of a stump, the shrew drank deep. The pointed snout had just come to the surface, when his quick hearing caught from overhead a tiny flutter of sound. Long ages of sudden death from the air for the shrew-folk made the next movement of this one automatic. ”

“ Not even the long-eared rabbit can detect the faintest shade of a sound quicker than the shrew, and only the bat equals his sense of touch. [Pg 140] Like that flyer, the shrew can detect an obstacle in time to avoid it, even when running at full speed, by becoming conscious of some subtle change in the air-pressure.
Among the great throng of little wild folk playing at hide-and-seek with death among the fallen logs, and in the labyrinth of passageways in the beds of sand and moss and fern, no one was swifter than this one, the smallest of them all. ”

“ Four young fellows carry a straw-man or one of their companions, and are followed by a funeral procession. A show is made of depositing the pretended corpse in the grave, after which the bystanders make believe to mourn, crying out in melancholy tones, “Ah! my poor little Shrove Tuesday!” The boy who played the part of Shrove Tuesday bears the name for the whole year.613 At Lesneven in Lower Brittany it was formerly the custom on Ash Wednesday to burn a [pg 230] straw-man, covered with rags, after he had been promenaded about the town. ”

“ Who can gain access to the White Country and the Black Mountain and come to the Land of Camphor and the Castle of Crystal, and how shall he traverse the Island of Birds and the Wady of Wild Beasts and the Valley of the Jann and enter our Islands? If any stranger came hither, he would be drowned in the seas of destruction: so be of good cheer and eyes without a tear anent my journey; for none may avail to tread our earth." And she ceased not to persuade him, till he deigned give her leave to depart.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. ”

“ His armour hung in his chamber in the palace and with it he left the Zoroaster he had known—the strong, the young, the beautiful; the warrior, the lover, the singer of sweet songs, the smiter of swift blows, the peerless horseman, the matchless man. He who went out alone into the great night, was a moving sorrow, a horror of grief made visible as a walking shadow among things real, a man familiar already with death as with a friend, and with the angel of death as with a lover. ”

“ As he trailed along the winding of the tunnel, his motion made a faint, dry, whispering sound. This delicate sound, together with his peculiar, sickly, elusive scent, travelled just before him, and reached the doorway of the little chamber where the shrew was sleeping. The sleeper awoke,—wide awake all at once, as it behoves the wild kindreds to be. ”

“ She grasped his cold thin hand, and he allowed himself to be led to the sarcophagus as meekly as a lamb. Into his stone coffin he stepped, and then sank back and disappeared. A few moments later, Zoraida beckoned me, and, standing beside the great sardonyx tomb, I peered in. The marabout lay stretched out as before, with wide-open, sightless eyes, and when I touched his cheek, it was hard and icy cold.
“There is no life. See!” she said, and, taking the knife, she once again plunged it into the corpse, afterwards withdrawing it and replacing it in the velvet sheath hanging at her girdle. ”

“ The great lie fell from her lips with a calmness that a martyr might have envied. But Zoroaster stepped between her and the king. As he passed her, his clear, calm eyes met hers for a moment. He read in her face the fear of death, and he pitied her.
"Let the king hear me," he said. "It is not Phraortes who has headed the revolt, and it is told me that Phraortes has fled from Ecbatana. Let the king send forth his armies and subdue the rebels, and let this woman go; for the fear of death is upon her and it may be that she has not sinned in this matter. ”

“ All life, death, hatred, love:
All self concentred in the sole desire—
Hear thou the Voice of Fire!
This hope was Zoroaster’s—this is mine!
Not one but many splendours hath the Shrine:
Not one but many paths approach the gate
That guards the Adytum, fortifying Fate!
Mine was, by weariness of blood and brain,
Mere bitter fruit of pain
Sought in the darkness of an harlot’s bed,
To make me as one dead:
To loose the girders of the soul, and gain
Breathing and life for the Intelligible;
Find death, yet find it living. ”

“ This strange track was that of the masked shrew, the smallest mammal in the world, a tiny, blind death, whose doom it is to devour its own weight in flesh and blood every twenty-four hours. Another track showed like a tunnel, with its concave surface stamped with zigzag paw-marks. It was the trail of the blarina shrew, which twisted here and there as if a snake had writhed its way through the powdered snow. Again, all other tracks radiated away from it; for the blarina is braver and bigger and fiercer than its little blood-brother, the masked shrew. ”

“ The followers of Zoroaster were enjoined to pull a dead body out of the water. “No sin attaches to him for any bone, hair, grass, flesh, dung, or blood that may drop back into the water.”— (Fargard VI., Vendidad, Zendavesta, Darmesteter’s edition; Max Müller’s edition of the “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1880, p. 70.)
“There dies a man in the depths of the vale; a bird takes flight from the top of the mountain down into the depths of the vale, and it eats up the corpse of the dead man there; then up it flies from the depths of the vale to the top of the mountain ”