Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/167

 10 s. VIIL AUG. 17, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

137

COFFINS AND SHROUDS (10 S. viii. 90). Thomas Hearne in his ' Diary ' (30 April, 1724) records that

'"formerly it was usual to be buried in winding sheets without coffins, and the bodies were laid on biers, and this custom was practised about three score years agoe, tho' even then persons of rank were buried in coffins, unless they ordered otherwise. Thomas Neile of Hart- Hall, in Queen Elizabeth's time, is represented in a winding sheet in Cas- sing_ton church ; it seenis, therefore, he was not buried in a coffin, especially since his effigies in the winding sheet there was put up in his life time."- Bliss's ed., vol. ii. p. 534.

A writer who uses the signature H. E. in the first volume (p. 321) of ' N. & Q.' gives the following quotation from " a table of Dutyes " dated 11 Dec., 1664, then pre- served in Shoreditch Church. As many of your readers are not acquainted with the contents of the early volumes, it may be well to reproduce what appeared so long ago :

" For a buryall in the New Church Yard without a coffin 00 00 08.

' ' For a buryall in y" Old Church Yard without a coffin seauen pence 00 00 07.

" For the grave making and attendance of y e Vicar and Clarke on y e enterment of a corps un- coffined the churchwardens to pay the ordinary duteys (and no more) of this table."

Coffinless burial was provided for himself by James Clegg the Conjurer in 1751 (Tim Bobbin's ' Works,' ed. 1894, p. 206).

References to this subject occur in Denton's ' Hist. St. Giles, Cripplegate,' p. 133 ; Shirley's ' House of Lechmere,' p. 50 ; and Cotton's ' Exeter Gleanings,' p. 6.

It may be well to give a French example of recent times : " At a small chapel in the burial-ground near the

town is kept the common coffin for the poor of

Bernay. The custom of merely putting the bodies of persons of the lower class into coffins when they are brought to the burial-ground, and then deposit ing them naked in their graves, prevails at present in this part of France as it did formerly in Eng- land." Dawson Turner, ' Tour in Normandy,' 1820, vol. ii. p. 122.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

I think MR. NEWSHOLME will find all that he can wish to know in a valuable paper by Mr. William Andrews, Librarian of the Royal Institution, Hull, entitled ' Burials without Coffins,' of which a hundred copies were printed for private circulation (Hull, William Andrews & Co., the Hull Press, 1899). Among the references there given are ' TestamentaEboracensia,' vol. i. (Surtees Soc.) ; Andrews 's ' Church Treasury ' ; Matthew Paris ; Leland's ' Itinerary ' : ' Reliquiae Hearnianae,' p. 534 ; Dyer's 'JSocial Life as told by Parish Registers,'

1898 ; " Table of Dutyes " of Shoreditch Church, 1664 ; ' Records of St. Giles's, Cripplegate,' by the Rev. W. Denton, M.A. (London, 1883) ; Dean Comber's ' Com- panion to the Temple ' ; Reliquary of July, 1864 ; Walford's ' Famines of the World,' &c. If any difficulty should arise as to consulting Mr. Andrews's ' Burials without Coffins,' I shall be happy to lend my copy.

There is also " a very suggestive little book " entitled ' On Christian Care of the Dying and the Dead,' in which will be found the history of the use of the coffin, its mate- rial, shape, improved designs, furniture, &c. An extract from this work (I do not know the date, but the publisher was Hayes), is as follows :

" Coffins of wood, or of any other material, were but seldom used in England, until within the last one hundred and seventy years. There is evidence to prove that before that time the departed were usually wrapped only in a winding-sheet, marked with one cross, or with three ; and so laid in the ground, often the next day after decease."

The use of the parish coffin was not peculiar to these islands. In Spain, I believe, to this day, the coffin merely serves the purpose of conveying the corpse to the graveside, and performing the same office for others coming after. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

29, Tooting Bee Road, Streatham.

" NEITHER MY EYE NOR MY ELBOW " (10 S. viii. 7). "Eye" is not the word used among the English working classes in the present day, nor was it a thousand years ago. The word, though once in use in polite society, is now only in common use, without a thought of impropriety any more than " eye " by the working people. Dr. Murray, who starts the derivation of the word with the year 1000 (' O.E.D.,' vol. i. p. 465, col. 2), says it is obsolete in polite use.

RALPH THOMAS.

" PRETTY MAID'S MONEY " (10 S. v. 6). I have only just seen the contribution under this heading, and I should like to point out that, although the extract given therein is from a journal published at Launceston, the ceremony of distributing the " Pretty Maid's Money " 21. 10s. given each year, in accordance with the will of the Rev. Mr. Meyrick takes place at Holsworthy, which is across the border, in Devonshire.

I am the more concerned to correct this, though a Launceston man, because I re- member well, and as far back as 1825, in my early childhood, the Rev. Thomas Meyrick, the parson referred to, and himself the son of Owen Lewis Meyrick, a Hols*