QUEER EPITAHS.

Bruce Herald, Volume VI, Issue 404, 7 February 1872, Page 7

QUEER EPITAHS.

By D. M

(From the '.Glasgow Weekly Herald.')

Kext to, Scripture, it seems fts ifrhvmd had the most q tiie tiner 'influence, over th 6 departed. "Thorpe's, body " might rise-, but "Thorpe's corpse " is felt to be laid at rest. It seems, at any rate, to be a great additional recommendation f t 6 some people that an epitaph rhymes. "Here lies .. Elizabeth Wise. . She died of thunder sent from Heaven, Seventeen hundred and seventy-fceven." Another runs : "J. P. P. Provost of Dundee, Hallelujah . Hallelujee." " Here I lies, killed by the excise," is the epitaph on the tomb of a notorious smuggler. '" Here I lays, killed by a cLaise," is an inscription in Frodsham, cemetery over a departed hostler. Another runs : — " Here lies I, Jonathan Fry, Killed by a sky- . Kocket in my eye." The following 1 was copied from a tombstone in the '* East Neuk o ; Pife," CraU) I think :— " Here lies my quid and gracious Aunlie, Wham death has packed in his portraanty. Three score and ten years G-od did gift her, And here she lies wha deil daurs lift her."

The difficulty cf getting; a name worked into rhyme has sometimes driven the monumental poet to desperate expedients.

The following is from a Cheshire churchyard :—

" Here lies the remains of Thomas Woodhera Most amiable of husbands, most excellent of men." —

And has the following- foot note appended : —

N.B. — For ' Wood-/ie»i ' please read Wobdcock.'

This reminds one of the v/ifid up of little Pet Marjories «onnet —

" His nose's cast is of the Roman, He is a very pretty woman ; (I could not get a rhyme for Roman, So was obliged to call him ' woman.'

If monuments are not places on which to record vindictivene^s, still less are they places on which to ascribe jokes. Yet the thing is not without precedent : — "" Here lies Mistress Margt. Sqvteer ; , She would if she could, but she couldn't std]i

here. Two bad legs and a baddish cough ; It was the legs that carried her off."

On another old lady's tomb in 'tb.6 church-yard of Neston St. Nicholas, is the couplet —

Here lies a certain Elizabeth Mann, Who lived an old Maid and died ah old. Mann. The living- seems to be cracking 1 jokes with the dead in the following inscription taken from a Stone in Hertford Cemetery:-— ■ffOJIA^. " Grieve not for me my hiisband dear, I am not dead, but sleepeth here ; With patience wait, prepare to die, And in a short time you'll come to I." MAN. " I am not grieved, my dearest life ; Sleep on : I have got another wife. Therefore I cannot come to fchee,. For I must go and live with she. " In one of the cemeteries in Paris is to be seen the following 1 quaint epitaph on, husband and wife: — " I am anxiously expecting you. — A.D. 1827". Herd am.— A.D. 1867." The good woman had taken torty years to make up her mind and follow. The following- is from Kincardineshire : — •' Wha is't lies here V '" Piper Jock. You needna' sp eer." " O lad, is that you ?" " Ay. but I'm deid noo." " Rise Jock, and gies a tune." "Ah ! man, I canna win." [ A curious story is told of the widow oi a celebrated manufacturer of fire-works. When about to erect a monument to her husband's memory, she visited two or three cemeteries to choose a style and get some ideas for an inscription. One epitaph; over the grave of an eminent composer, delighted her beyond measure. It rail thus : —

11 JEfe has gone to the only place . . Where his own works are excelled." She was so charmed with this sentiment that she adopted it. Accordingly, on her husband's monument th j following; inscription appeared in due time :—

Erected by his Spouse, to the memory of A— B— Manufacturer of Fireworks

He has gone to the only place Where his own works are excelled. Designedly, however, some epitaphs ard more candid than complimentary :— " Here lies the body of P. M. Haskell, He lived a knave and died a rascal."— must have been written by some one not troubled with the Nil nisi bdnum complaint.