Humour among the tombstones

Press, 1 May 1981, Page 13

Humour among the tombstones

By

ALAN KENT

If you wanted something to laugh at, or even something to tickle your sense of humour, would you deliberately choose a gloomy graveyard? Yet, in some graveyards you will find epitaphs to amuse you — funny, original, macabre, tragic, even cruel. You might wonder where the lady went off to, in this epitaph in a Dorset graveyard: ,V- ' ' , ' - ‘‘Here lies the body of Margaret Bent. She kicked up her heels

and away she went." How deeply “daddy” must have been loved, if we are to believe this epitaph, found in an Indian graveyard: “We miss him here, we miss him there, We miss dear daddy everywhere" Surely there is a touch of pathos in this epitaph, .said to have" been seen in a London churchyard: “Here’lies Anne Mann, she lived an old maid, and died an old Mann." Laconic, tersely brief, was

this epitaph to an American who, seeimgly, was responsible for the death of five friends in a motoring accident: “Here lies G. Whilliken’s friends, all five. „ He took them along when * he learned to drive."

How poignant, even tragic, is this one, recently inscribed When the son of a parish clerk was killed in 1776 by falling ice outside a church in Bampton, Devon, an inscription on a tablet placed in the church tower read;

“Bless my eyes, here he. lies; In a sad pickle, kill'd by an icicle." • - On the tome, ne of a young woman names Betty Pearl Robert: :“I told you I was sick.”

The tragic aspect is that, even though she had had 18 stomach operations, she was of such a sunny disposition, nobody really believed she was sick. Her doctor told her: “You're not sick. You are always smiling.” She died the next day. In a London'churchyard

the following epitaph has been seen: “One More and no more can lie here alone: but here lies one More, and That’s more than one." The poor man's name was More. This brief epitaph existed in a churchyard in Dodge City, Kansas: “Ran for sheriff, 1872. Ran from Sheriff, 1876, Buried, 1876." ■ There is a warning, surely

in this epitaph, from a Cheshire churchyard: "Beneath this stone, a lump of clay, Lies Uncle Percy Daniels; Too early in the month of May, He cast his winter flannels." Brief and to the point is this one: “He fought the good fight — and lost." Finally, cheerfully gloomy, was the epitaph on a family tomb: “Cheerio, will be seeing you soon"