Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/403

Rh they could again assemble in the room and partake of the funeral meal. As the doors in these old-fashioned houses are low and narrow, this seemed to be a practical way of getting over a difficulty.

I remembered then the many occasions on which I had been present at funerals in the big end room of the farmhouses. In the middle of the room stood the open coffin, with the corpse inside; along the walls were tables groaning with good cheer and surrounded by guests. When all had arrived, and all had had enough to eat, the candles were lighted, a hymn sung, the last word spoken. Then came the leave-taking; the widow patted her dead husband's cheek, the mother lifted up the little children and let them stroke the dead man's forehead, whilst the tears fell fast; then came the other relations in due order; last of all the coffin lid was nailed on, each hammer stroke seeming to go into one's very heart. Then the coffin was borne out—for many years I never saw any wreaths, they belong to the present time—placed on the hearse, and carried at a foot-pace down the high road, never through side roads, to the church, and hidden away in the grave.

If we look closely into the funeral customs at home, we shall find two different currents of thought, one which belongs, so to speak, to a superficial stratum of church life, where all the Christian ceremonies, with the burial service and the tolling of the church bell are rigorously observed. This is the most noticeable, and many will never have seen anything else. Underneath this lies another, what I am inclined to call an antique layer of practices, of which one sees very little, and of which the meaning has been forgotten, but which in old-fashioned