CHAPTER X. Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave. SIR THOMAS Browne. En songeant quelquefois aux élucubrations auxquelles la latitude de mon sujet m'a entraîné, j'ai eu sincèrement la crainte d'avoir pu ennuyer; car, moi aussi j'ai quelquefois bâillé sur les ouvrages d'autrui. BRILLAT-SAVARIN. Village funerals. Sick poor. Games.- Village Priests.· JUNE 7. Returning from the bath this morning, I overtook a funeral procession hurrying along to the burial-ground. As John Quiet, though the procession was out of sight, gravely removed his hat and looked sedately on the ground, I asked him whether that was the cus A VILLAGE FUNERAL, 153 tom of his country, and finding that it was, uncovered my head also. A couple of swallow-tailed banners on high poles, the one white, the other black,-were borne in front by two men; behind whom was the clerk, carrying in his hand the priest's rusty hat, a broken white cup of holy water, a small brush, and a heavy wooden crucifix, with its hangings of purple silk. The priest a dirty man of six feet, like a village shoemaker, "marvellous ill-favoured,"―followed the clerk, indecently giggling with two acquaintances who walked by his side. The corpse, which was that of an old woman, was in the common open bier, and,-with a black veil over it, and the cold dead hands, long used to labour, clasped on the breast, was decently dressed. The banner-bearer and bier-men wore, as did the clerk, loose gowns of yellow serge over their ordinary every-day dresses of blue and grey, and were, in common with the ten or twenty peasants who followed the body, bare-headed. Having set down the bier in the middle of the graveyard, and having arranged two bands of straw under the neck and heels of the corpse, in order to lift it from the bier to the grave, the service began. 154 A VILLAGE FUNERAL. The The clerk lighted and dealt round six lanky tapers to the men in gowns, held one himself, handed the greasy mass-book and the water-brush to the priest, and, putting down that functionary's hat between his legs, stood erect, crucifix in hand, prepared to say the responses. priest muttered through the prayers within three minutes, while the taper-holders twisting round and about to save their tapers from the draughts of wind that threatened to blow them out, grinned and jested with the bystanders at the straits in which they were placed." Refuse not gold," says an old divine, "though it come from an earthen pot;" and, accordingly, the holy-water, in a broken and bandaged white pipkin, was handed to the priest, who ended by dipping into it his small white brush and freely sprinkling the corpse. The body was lowered, three idle children, sitting on the heap of fresh mould, amused themselves by rolling the earth upon the body,the people talked, -the clerk threw away the holy-water as if it were nothing worth, collected his tapers, hastily blowing them out lest the parish wax should be wasted, the priest walked behind the grave-yard gate, pulled the surplice over his head, lowered the black gown down to A VILLAGE FUNERAL. 155 his feet, handing them to the clerk in return for his hat; and making a mean jest on the old woman, "who was much more quiet now" (muito mais quieta)" than she had been down yonder," (pointing to the village,) shook himself into his short blue jacket, and turned up the lane. The gravedigger, "Death's hireling, who scoops out his neighbour's grave, Or wraps an old acquaintance up in clay, As unconcerned as when he plants a tree," filled and rammed the grave, the gate was locked, and with crucifix and flags, bier, prayerbook, gowns, tufted cap, and yellow-white surplice, the bearers moved merrily down the narrow lane to put away their paraphernalia until another villager should be summoned to his last long home. The only person at all affected or serious at the burial was a middle-aged, docile-looking man, probably the son of the deceased, who shed a few unfeigned tears while the grave was filling, and stood for some time gazing on the spot, and thinking, perhaps, that he had never felt the value of a mother till she came to be laid in the grave. June 8. An old woman, whose son lay sick of a fever, came to-day to beseech me, "for the love of God," to see him and give him remedies. She was a persuasive and venerable woman, full of a mother's anxiety for her son, who was stretched on a straw bed in a miserable cottage in the village, languishing under a burning fever. Through the mistaken kindness of his neighbours, the cottage was crammed with whisperers watching every movement with eager curiosity, and making the cottage unwholesomely hot. There were more than twenty lookers-on: some at the windows, others at the door, the rest round the bed. The dying man had received extreme unction, and the small room had been decorated on the occasion with the usual hangings of shawls and handkerchiefs, and the ordinary amount of green faya boughs. The pallid careworn man, with bright eyes, pale lips, and hollow cheeks, lay on his uneasy bed in the last stage of a fever. His strength was so far gone that he could with difficulty raise his eyelids, or turn in his bed, or speak. His nimble wife, a healthy mother of two little children who played about the room, squatted beside her husband on the bed, fanning off the flies; and the strong, brawny villagers, with their wives, and their fresh, cheery daugh |