heres a few ?owers! but about midnight more:
the herbs that have oil them cold dew o the night
are strewings ?ttst fraves----
you were as ?owers now withered; even so
these herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
cymbeline.
among the beautiful and simple-hearted s of rural life which still linger in some parts of england are those of strewing ?owers before the funerals and planting them at the graves of departed friends. these, it is said, are the remains of some of the rites of the primitive church; but they are of still higher antiquity, having been observed among the greeks and romans, and frequently mentioned by their writers, and were no doubt the spontaneous tributes of uered affe, inating long before art had tasked itself to modulate sorrow into song or story it on the mo. they are now only to be met with in the most distant aired places of the kingdom, where fashion and innovation have not been able t in and trample out all the curious and iing traces of the olden time.
in glamanshire, we are told, the bed whereon the corpse lies is covered with ?owers, a alluded to in one of the wild and plaities of ophelia:
white his shroud as the mountain snow,
larded all with sweet ?owers;
which be-wept to the grave did go,
with true love showers.
there is also a most delicate aiful rite observed in some of the remote villages of the south at the funeral of a female who has died young and unmarried. a chaplet of white ?owers is borne before the corpse by a young girl in age, size, and resemblance, and is afterwards hung up in the church over the aced seat of the deceased. these chaplets are sometimes made of white paper, in imitation of ?owers, and inside of them is generally a pair of white gloves. they are intended as emblems of the purity of the deceased, and the of glory which she has received in heaven.
in some parts of the try, also, the dead are carried to the grave with the singing of psalms and hymns--a kind of triumph, "to show," says bourhat they have ?heir course with joy, and are bee querors." this, i am informed, is observed in some of the northern ties, particularly in northumberland, and it has a pleasing, though melancholy effect to hear of a still evening in some lonely try se the mournful melody of a funeral dirge swelling from a distance, and to see the train slowly moving along the landscape.
thus, thus, and thus, we pass round
thy harmless a
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