RURAL FUNERALS.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 作者：华盛顿·欧文投票推荐加入书签留言反馈

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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 Bourne, "that 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 and unhaunted ground,

 And as we sing thy dirge, we will,

 The daffodill

 And other ?owers lay upon

 The altar of our love, thy stone.

 HERRICK.

 There is also a solemn respect paid by the traveller to the passing funeral in these sequestered places; for such spectacles, among the quiet abodes of Nature, sink deep into the soul. As the m train approaches he pauses, uncovered, to let it go by; he then follows silently in the rear; sometimes quite to the grave, at other times for a few hundred yards, and, having paid this tribute of respect to the deceased, turns and resumes his journey.

 The rich vein of melancholy which runs through the English character, and gives it some of its most toug and ennobling graces, is ?nely evidenced in these pathetic s, and in the solicitude shown by the on people for an honored and a peaceful grave. The humblest peasant, whatever may be his lowly lot while living, is anxious that some little respect may be paid to his remains. Sir Thomas Overbury, describing the "faire and happy milkmaid," observes, "thus lives she, and all her care is, that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of ?owers stucke upon her winding-sheet." The poets, too, who always breathe the feeling of a nation, tinually advert to this fond solicitude about the grave. In The Maids Tragedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a beautiful instance of the kind describing the caprielancholy of a brokeed girl:

 When she sees a bank

 Stuck full of ?owers, she, with a sigh, will tell

 Her servants, what a pretty place it were

 To bury lovers in; and made her maids

 Bluck em, and strew her over like a corse.

 The of decorating graves was oniversally prevalent:

 osiers were carefully bent over them to keep the turf uninjured, and about them were planted evergreens and ?owers. "We adorn their graves," says Evelyn, in his Sylva, "with ?owers and redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been pared in Holy Scriptures to those fadiies whose roots, being buried in dishonor, rise, again in glory." This usage has now bee extremely rare in England; but it may still be met with in the churchyards of retired villages, among the Welsh mountains; and I recolle instance of it at the small town of Ruthven, which lies at the head of the beautiful vale of Clewyd.

 I have been told also by a friend, who resent at the funeral of a young girl in Glamanshire, that the female attendants had their aprons full of ?owers, which, as soon as the body was interred, they stuck about the grave.

 He noticed several graves which had been decorated in the same manner. As the ?owers had been merely stu the ground, and not plahey had soon withered, and might be seen in various states of decay; some drooping, others quite perished. They were afterwards to be supplanted by holly, rosemary, and other evergreens, whi some graves had grown to great luxuriance, and overshadowed the tombstones.

 There was formerly a melancholy fancifulness in the arra of these rustic s, that had something in it truly poetical. The rose was sometimes blended with the lily, to form a general emblem of frail mortality. "This sweet ?ower," said Evelyn, "borne on a branch set with thorns and apanied with the lily, are natural hieroglyphics of itive, umbratile, anxious, and transitory life, which, making so fair a show for a time, is not yet without its thorns and crosses." The nature and color of the ?owers, and of the ribbons with which they were tied, had often a particular refereo the qualities or story of the deceased, or were expressive of the feelings of the mourner. In an old poem, entitled "Corydons Doleful Knell," a lover speci?es the decoratioends to use:

 A garland shall be framed

 By art and natures skill,

 Of sundry-colored ?owers,

 In token of good-will.

 And sundry-colored ribbons

 On it I will bestow;

 But chie?y blacke and yellowe

 With her to grave shall go.

 Ill deck her tomb with ?owers

 The rarest ever seen;

 And with my tears as showers

 Ill keep them fresh and green.

 The white rose, we are told, la the grave of a virgin; her chaplet was tied with white ribbons, in token of her spotless innoce, though sometimes black ribbons were intermio bespeak the grief of the survivors. The red rose was occasionally used, in remembrance of such as had been remarkable for benevolence; but roses in general were appropriated to the graves of lovers. Evelyn tells us that the was not altogether extin his time, near his dwelling in the ty of Surrey, "where the maidens yearly planted and decked the graves of their defunct sweethearts with rose-bushes."

 And Camden likewise remarks, in his Britannia: "Here is also a certain , observed time out of mind, of planting rose-trees upon the graves, especially by the young men and maids who have lost their loves; so that this churchyard is now full of them."

 When the deceased had been unhappy in their loves, emblems of a mloomy character were used, such as the yew and cypress, and if ?owers were strewn, they were of the most melancholy colors.

 Thus, in poems by Thomas Stanley, Esq. (published in 1651), is the following stanza:

 Yet strew

 Upon my dismall grave

 Such s as you have,

 Forsaken cypresse and yewe;

 For kinder ?owers take no birth

 rowth from suhappy earth.

 In The Maids Tragedy, a pathetic little air, is introduced, illustrative of this mode of decorating the funerals of females who had been disappointed in love:

 Lay a garland on my hearse

 Of the dismall yew,

 Maidens, willow branches wear,

 Say I died true.

 My love was false, but I was ?rm,

 From my hour of birth;

 Upon my buried body lie

 Lightly, gentle earth.

 The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to re?ne and elevate the mind; and we have a proof of it in the purity of se and the ued elegance of thought which pervaded the whole of these funeral observahus it was an especial precaution that sweet-sted evergreens and ?owers should be employed. The iioo have been to soften the horrors of the tomb, to beguile the mind from brooding over the disgraces of perishing mortality, and to associate the memory of the deceased with the most delicate aiful objects in nature. There is a dismal process going on in the grave, ere dust return to its kindred dust, which the imagination shrinks from plating; and we seek still to think of the form we have loved, with those re?ned associations which it awakened when blooming before us in youth ay. "Lay her i the earth," says Laertes, of his virgin sister,

 And from her fair and unpolluted ?esh

 May violets spring.

 Herrick, also, in his "Dirge of Jephtha," pours forth a fragrant ?ow of poetical thought and image, whi a manner embalms the dead in the recolles of the living.

 Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,

 And make this place all Paradise:

 May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence

 Fat frankinse.

 Let balme and cassia send their st

 From out thy maiden mo.

 May all shie maids at wonted hours

 e forth to strew thy tombe with ?owers!<dfn></dfn>

 May virgins, when they e to mourn

 Male inse burn

 Upon thiar! theurn

 And leave thee sleeping in thy urn.

 I might y pages with extracts from the older British poets, who wrote when these rites were more prevalent, and delighted frequently to allude to them; but I have already quoted more than is necessary. I ot, however, refrain from giving a passage from Shakespeare, even though it should appear trite, which illustrates the emblematical meaning often veyed in these ?oral tributes, and at the same time possesses that magic of language and appositeness of imagery for which he stands pre-emi.

 With fairest ?owers,

 Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,

 Ill sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack

 The ?ower thats like thy face, pale primrose; nor

 The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor

 The leaf of eglantine; whom not to slander,

 Outsweetened not thy breath.

 There is certainly something more affeg in these prompt and spontaneous s of Nature than in the most costly mos of art; the hand strews the ?ower while the heart is warm, and the tear falls on the grave as affe is binding the osier round the sod; but pathos expires uhe slow labor of the chisel, and is chilled among the cold ceits of sculptured marble.

 It is greatly to be regretted that a so truly elegant and toug has disappeared from general use, as only in the most remote and insigni?t villages. But it seems as if poetical always shuns the walks of cultivated society. In proportion as people grow polite they cease to be poetical. They talk of poetry, but they have learnt to check its free impulses, to distrust its sallyiions, and to supply its most affeg and picturesque usages by studied form and pompous ceremonial. Few pageants be more stately and frigid than an English funeral in town. It is made up of show and gloomy parade:

 m carriages, m horses, m plumes, and hireling mourners, who make a mockery of grief. "There is a grave digged," says Jeremy Taylor, "and a solemn m, and a great talk in the neighborhood, and when the daies are ?hey shall be, and they shall be remembered no more." The associate in the gay and crowded city is soon fotten; the hurrying succession of new intimates and new pleasures effaces him from our minds, and the very ses and circles in which he moved are incessantly ?uctuating. But funerals in the try are solemnly impressive. The stroke of death makes a wider spa the village circle, and is an awful event iranquil uniformity of rural life. The passiolls its knell in every ear; it steals with its pervading melancholy over hill and vale, and saddens all the landscape.

 The ?xed and ungiures of the try also perpetuate the memory of the friend with whom we onjoyed them, who was the panion of our most retired walks, and gave animation to every lonely se. His idea is associated with every charm of Nature; we hear his voi the echo which he once delighted to awaken; his spirit haunts the grove which he once frequented; we think of him in the wild upland solitude or amidst the pensive beauty of the valley. In the freshness of joyous m we remember his beaming smiles and bounding gayety; and when sober eveniurns with its gathering shadows and subduing quiet, we call to mind many a twilight hour of gealk and sweet-souled melancholy.

 Each lonely place shall him restore,

 For him the tear be duly shed;

 Beloved till life charm no more,

 And mournd till pitys self be dead.

 Another cause that perpetuates the memory of the deceased in the try is that the grave is more immediately in sight of the survivors. They pass it on their way to prayer; it meets their eyes when their hearts are softened by the exercises of devotion; they linger about it on the Sabbath, when the mind is disengaged from worldly cares and most disposed to turn aside from present pleasures and present loves and to sit down among the solemos of the past. In North Wales the peasantry kneel and pray over the graves of their deceased friends for several Sundays after the interment; and where the tender rite of strewing and planting ?owers is still practised, it is always renewed oer, Whitsuntide, and other festivals, when the seass the panion of former festivity more vividly to mind. It is９９lib? also invariably performed by the relatives and friends; no menials nor hirelings are employed, and if a neighbor yields assista would be deemed an insult to offer pensation.

 I have dwelt upon this beautiful rural , because as it is one of the last, so is it one of the holiest, of?ces of love.

 The grave is the ordeal of true affe. It is there that the divine passion of the soul mas its superiority to the instinctive impulse of mere animal attat. The latter must be tinually refreshed a alive by the presence of its object, but the love that is seated in the soul live on long remembrahe mere inations of sense languish and dee with the charms which excited them, and turn with shuddering disgust from the dismal prects of the tomb; but it is thehat truly spiritual affe rises, puri?ed from every sensual desire, aurns, like a holy ?ame, to illumine and sanctify the heart of the survivor.

 The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other af?i tet; but this wound we sider it a duty to keep open, this af?i we cherish and brood over in solitude.

 Where is the mother who would willingly fet the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms though every recolle is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly fet the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would fet the friend over whom he mourns? Who, evehe tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of solation that must be bought by fetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the geear of recolle, when the sudden anguish and the vulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throassing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exge it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song.

 There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every rese! From its peaceful bosom spring frets and tender recolles. Who look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a punctious throb that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him?

 But the grave of those we loved--what a plaeditation!

 There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue aleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell upoenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness, of the parting se. The bed of death, with all <s></s>its sti?ed griefs--its noiseless attendas mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, ?uttering, thrilling--oh, how thrilling!--pressure of the hand!

 The faint, faltering ats, struggling ih to give one more assurance of affe! The last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence!

 Ay, go to the grave of buried love aate! There settle the at with thy sce for every past be ued--every past endearment unregarded, of that departed being who ever-never--never return to be soothed by thy trition!

 If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affeate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ves whole happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought or word or deed, the spirit that generously ?ded in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one ued pang to that true heart whiow lies cold and still beh thy feet,--then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ule a will e thronging back upon thy memory and knog dolefully at thy soul: then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing aant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan and pour the unavailing tear, more deep, more bitter because unheard and unavailing.

 Then weave thy chaplet of ?owers and strew the beauties of Nature about the grave; sole thy broken spirit, if thou st, with these tender yet futile tributes ret; but take warning by the bitterness of this thy trite af?i over the dead, and heh be more faithful and affeate in the discharge of thy duties to the living.

 --------

 In writing the preg article it was not inteo give a full detail of the funeral s of the English peasantry, but merely to furnish a few hints and quotations illustrative of particular rites, to be appended, by way of o another paper, which has been withheld. The article swelled insensibly into its present form, and this is mentioned as an apology for so brief and casual a notice of these usages after they have been amply and learnedly iigated in other works.

 I must observe, also, that I am well aware that this of ad graves with ?<tt></tt>owers prevails in other tries besides England. Indeed, in some it is much meneral, and is observed even by the rid fashionable; but it is then apt to lose its simplicity and to degee into affectation. Bright, in his travels in Lower Hungary, tells of mos of marble and recesses formed for retirement, with seats placed among bowers of greenhouse plants, and that the graves generally are covered with the gayest ?owers of the season. He gives a casual picture of ?lial piety which I ot but transcribe; for I trust it is as useful as it is delightful to illustrate the amiable virtues of the sex. "When I was at Berlin," says he, "I followed the celebrated If?and to the grave. Mingled with some pomp you might trace much real feeling. In the midst of the ceremony my attention was attracted by a young woman who stood on a mound of earth newly covered with turf, which she anxiously protected from the feet of the passing crowd. It was the tomb of her parent; and the ?gure of this affeate daughter presented a mo more striking than the most costly work of art."

 I will barely add an instance of sepulchral decoration that I o with among the mountains of Switzerland. It was at the village of Gersau, which stands on the borders of the Lake of Lue, at the foot of Mount Rigi. It was ohe capital of a miniature republic shut up between the Alps and the lake, and accessible on the land side only by footpaths. The whole force of the republic did not exceed six hundred ?ghting men, and a few miles of circumference, scooped out as it were from the bosom of the mountains, prised its territory. The village of Gersau seemed separated from the rest of the world, aaihe golden simplicity of a purer age. It had a small church, with a burying-ground adjoining. At the heads of the graves were placed crosses of wood or iron. On some were af?xed miniatures, rudely executed, but evidently attempts at likenesses of the deceased.

 On the crosses were hung chaplets of ?owers, some withering others fresh, as if occasionally renewed. I paused with i at this se: I felt that I was at the source of poetical description, for these were the beautiful but ued s of the heart which poets are fain to record. In a gayer and more populous place I should have suspected them to have been suggested by factitious se derived from books; but the good people of Gersau knew little of books; there was not a novel nor a love-poem in the village, and I questioher any peasant of the place dreamt, while he was twining a fresh chaplet for the grave of his mistress, that he was ful?lling one of the most fanciful rites of poetical devotion, and that he ractically a poet.

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