BURIAL ROMANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 248, 18 October 1924, Page 19

BURIAL ROMANCE.

THE GOBDON-CCMMINGS DESCENT FROM CHARLEMAGNE. I/nder the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let mc lie.

Miss Constance Frederica G«rdoo-Cum-ming, traveller and authoress, whose dca'h In her eighty-eighth year severs another link between several generations of one of the oldest of Scottish families, ts not to have the barial desired by Gordon-Cummings of Altyre. "I desire tiat I may be buried without a coffin on the banks of the Findhorn, near the Soldier's Hole, and that a cairn of stones be erected over mc," lias been a phrase in recent years In more than one vrilL Miss Gordon Cummins herself bad sympathy with the romantic Idea, for in a personal letter to a relative on the last occasion of each, an interment 6he wrote:— "Personally I have no feeling about consecrated ground—for we know that 'tbe earth is tie Lord's,' and Be guards His people wherever their dost lies." For a thousand years the Cummtnga, or Comyne (the family that figured notably in a critical stage of Scottish history) have held Altyre, and they claim that their ancestor who came over with the Conqueror was descended from Charlemagne. Miss Gordon - Cumming's books dealing with her travels in Ceylon, India, China. Fiji, Hawaii and California, attained a large measure of popularity 60 years ago. For the last 45 years she has been closely aesociated with work among the blind in China.