Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/356

 320 Hampshire Folklore.

" quite a new thing to me when I came into Hampshire, and on asking an explanation at Upton Grey I was told that it was to warn St. Peter that a soul was coming, and he must open the gate and let it in. Indeed, one day, when the sexton had delayed to ring this peal till he had first filled in the grave, an old woman came and bitterly complained to me. "It were a tarble cruel thing to keep that poor soul awaiting in the cold, a day like this." "^*

As in many other parts of England, it is usually con- sidered the correct thing after a funeral for all the bereaved family to attend church on the following Sunday, clad in heavy mourning, and sit together. In some places the party neither stand nor kneel throughout the service, as I have seen in Herefordshire also. The women, thickly veiled, with great display of black-bordered kerchief, sob at intervals. The men, for the most part, study intently the insides of the hats they twirl in their hands. Details vary in different parishes. Still, as a rule, they leave the church first of the congregation, — but sometimes last, the chief thing seemingly being to keep apart from others, — and gather round the grave in mournful silence.

In many villages the grave must not be in the north-east corner of the churchyard. White noticed this superstition against the north side and east, but hoped that " as two or three families of best repute have begun to bury in that quarter, prejudice may wear out by degrees." A century and more has not eradicated it, however, and only the last time I was in Hampshire, I was told by a girl from Fording- bridge that no one would be buried in the north-east of a churchyard, as it was "Hell Corner." The feeling against it " apparently never existed at Weyhill," Mr. Heanley says, — " but it did at Upton Grey, and a former Vicar, a Mr. Rookin, who died in 1874, left directions that he should himself be buried there, hoping thereby to destroy it." I also found it

^*Cf. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties etc., pp. 62-3 (Bucks).