Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/163

 9'* s. x. AUO 23, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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MOURNING SUNDAY (9 th S. ix. 366, 390, 497 ; x. 72). On the Sunday next after a funeral it is customary in this village for the family and bearers to attend either church or chapel, and for the minister who officiated at the interment to "improve the occasion." At church the bearers assemble in the porch, and then all proceed to a pew where they can sit together. The family either occupy their own pew or, in the case of non-church- goers, are provided with convenient seats. Without exception they all stand at the usual customary parts of the service. I may say I have only on very rare occasions seen mourners stand during the Psalm at the burial service.

Until very recently it was the rule for male mourners to wear long trailing crape hatbands. After the funeral the tails were pinned up on to the hat and remained so until after the next Sunday. The bearers were also provided with similar bands, but in this case they were of black silk. These silk bands were in most instances sold back again to the local undertaker at a much lower price than they were charged to the bereaved family. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

Thirty years ago it was general in this dis- trict (North Westmorland) for the mourners to attend church in a body the Sunday after a funeral, all wearing the gloves, hatbands, and scarves which had been presented to them, whether relatives or not. The mourners and their immediate friends sat together during the service, and remained in their places till the rest of the congregation had left.

A similar custom also prevailed at wed- dings : the bride and bridegroom, attended by those who had accompanied them to church for the wedding ceremony, and wear- ing the nuptial finery and white gloves, always given by the bride, came to church together on the following Sunday and sat in the same pew so far as possible. The customs are now almost obsolete. M. E. N.

Additional examples of this custom from Oxfordshire, Kent, Surrey, East Dorset, and Guernsey, were given in letters to the St. James's Gazette of 15 and 16 April. There is no special reason, therefore, for supposing it to be of Scandinavian origin. I give the letters below :

The custom is a comparatively common one

in the villages of England. I have come across it many times in Oxfordshire, Kent, and Surrey, and 1 have every reason to suppose it obtains elsewhere. Ihe "extraordinary part is in my experience the usual part. The mourners never take any parti- cipation in the service, but remain seated through-

out. They usually display pocket-handkerchiefs, and affect (some of the company at any'-rate) to weep. The men usually wore black hat-scarves of considerable length, but these are not now seen. It would be interesting to know why the writer of the paragraph thinks the custom is a " Scan- dinavian relic." I am afraid I do not know the connexion between the Isle of Man and Scan- dinavia. WILLIAM CHARLES CLUFF.

Precisely the same custom exists in Guernsey, wherein the country parishes " taking mourning,'* as it is called, is always observed the Sunday after a funeral. The members of the family and all the relations, as in the Isle of Man, go in procession to the church and sit in the front pews, and they neither kneel nor stand nor take any part in the service, walking back again in procession after the service. As regards the origin being Scandinavian, it is possible this is the case, as Norsemen settled in Normandy (hence the name), and the Channel Islands, being part of the Duchy of Normandy, have of course inherited all the old Norman customs. S. H. C.

SIE, In West Dorset the custom of which you speak in your Friday's- issue is followed, or at least was a few years ago. For twenty-two years I was rector of a parish in that county, and the mourners attended service the Sunday after the funeral, and remained seated the whole time, holding hand- kerchiefs to their eyes, and apparently quite un- conscious as to what was going on. As they all .sat together in the best part of the church the effect was very strange. JOHN B. M. CAMM.


 * f J. P. LEWIS.

[We have ourselves witnessed and taken part in similar proceedings in the West Riding.]

"HARRY DICK HAT": "ADELAIDE WAIST- COAT " (9 th S. x. 48). Adelaide was a colour in vogue in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, obviously named after Queen Ade- laide, so that the date of its currency may be easily inferred; The tint was a purple or mauve, not unlike what we know as prune or plum colour. E. RIMBAULT DIBDIN.

HONORIFICABILITUDINITAS (9 th . S. ix. 243, 371,

494 ; x. 52). -The use of honorificabilitudinita- tibus in ' The Complaynt of Scotland,' before either Shakespeare or Bacon was born, dis- poses of the'suggestion that it was inserted as an anagram in ' Love's Labour 's Lost.' Your two contributors MR. C. CRAWFORD and MR. R. HAINES in following Mr. Sidney Lee in his argument that the parallelisms in Shakespeare and Bacon are " ph rages in ordi- nary use by all writers of the day " may be able to inform me of the use of a certain word by any other Elizabethan or Jacobean writer except Shakespeare and Bacon. The word I refer to is " dexteriously." It is used for the first time in 'Twelfth Night '(1601) when the Clown addresses Olivia, " Dexteri- ously, good Madona," and for the second time in 'The Advancement of Learning'