Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/91



These rude sepulchral urns suggest nothing of the “flowery tale” which the poet Keats fancied he saw expressed in the Grecian Urn. They speak rather of a state of society rugged and devoid of luxury, where man in sterile, storm-swept isles had too ceaselessly to maintain the mere struggle for existence to devote much attention to Art. They suggest, however, the preparation of the body by weeping women, the solemn procession to the place of burning, the laying of the body upon the tall funeral pile, and the touch of the flaming torch held by the son of the departed, amid the lamentations of sorrowing friends standing around. Then, when the red flames cease to shoot upwards and the body is consumed, careful hands reverently gather the ashes and charred bones into the urn and deposit it in the prepared grave. A flat stone being placed above, the mourners perform the last rite in honour of the dead by heaping up stones to form his cairn, which