QUAINT TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTIONS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7395, 22 February 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

QUAINT TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTIONS.

A book that is highly diverting as well as valuable as a commentary on th© modes and manners of our forefathers Is a little 1/ volume of which a second edieion has just been' published by Messrs Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrler. Iti is entitled "Gleanings from God's Acre: Being a Collection of Epitaphs," and the author is Mr John Potter Briscoe.F/.R.H'.S. The author tells us that this differs from other collections, inasmuch as only epitaphs which actually exist, or have existed, on tombstones and other monuments of the dead, have been admitted. The collection is a large and varied one, and in all conscience, quaint enough, as the following random selections will show:— This is to the memory of the architect of the exchange and Guildhall, who was burled at Gateshead:— Here lies Robert Trollope, Who made your stones roll up. When death took his soul up. His body fill'd this hole up. In Upton-on-Severn is this business like epitaph to" a beerseller:— * Beneath this stone in hope of Zion, v Doth lie the landlord of the "Lion." His son keeps on the business still. Resigned unto the Heavenly will. In Abscombe Churchyard in Devonshire .is this epitaph:— Here lie, the remains of James Pady, brickmaker, late of this parish, in hope* that his clay will be remoulded in a. workmanlike manner, far superior to his former perishable materials. Keep death and judgment always iv your eye, Or else the devil off with you will fly. And in his kiln with" brimstone ever fry; If you neglect the narrow road to seek, Christ will reject you like a half burnt brick. On the tombstone of a carpenter, who lies buried at Portsmouth, the following lines are inscribed:— Here lies Jemmy -Little, a carpenter industrious, A very good natured man but somewhat blusterous. When that his little wife his authority withstood, He took a little stick and bang'd her as he would. His wife, now left alone, her loss does so deplore, She wishes Jemmy back to bang her a little more; , For now he's dead and gone this fault appears so small, A little thing would make her think it was no fault at all. This Is an epitaph from Dunmore in Ireland:— Here lie the remains of John Hall, Grocer, The world is not worth a fig, and I have good raisins for saying so. This plain spoken inscription is from a church-yard in Iselton-cum-Fenby, tn Lincolnshire: — Here lies the bodle of old Will Loveland; He's put to bed at length with a shovel, and Eas'd of expenses for raiment and food, Which all his life tyme he would fain have escyewed; He grudged his housekeeping— his children's support, And laid in his meates of the caggemag sorte, No fyshe or fowle touch'd he, when 'twas dearly bought, But a green taile or herrings, a score for a groate. No friend to the needy, His wealth gathered speedy, And he never did naught but evil. He lived like a hogg, And died like a dogg, And now he rides post to the devil. An equally blunt and honest inscription, but in a different sense, is one on a tombstone in Dumfries in memory or Robert Anderson, painter and glazier, who died 24th May, 1792, aged 80 years:— They may write epitaphs who can, I say here lies an honest man. This one, it is almost unnecessary to say, is from Ireland:— Here lies the body of Robert More, What signifys more words? Who killed himself by eating of curds: But if he had been rul'd by Sarah his wife, He might have lived all the days of his life.