THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21979, 14 June 1933, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer. It is perhaps natural that in these distressful times the thoughts should turn to the mortality of man—to the time when his taxes will he paid by someone else and his property mortgages become the responsibility of another, to the time when his only requirement of this world will be four planks of Southland beech and an estate that can be circumnavigated in seven seconds. A small demand, this, upon a sphere of which, when young, one has perhaps desired the length and the breadth, not to mention such intangible benefits as happiness; and when old he has required a quarter acre freehold, with water h. and c. and a residence fit for a gentleman to depart from, not taking into account his ambition to enjoy such incalculable blessings as the esteem of his fellows and his own peace of mind. At any rate a contributor in the south, who has been reflecting on the humours of life in that most sardonically appropriate of places, a graveyard, tempts us to indulge the cheerful morbidity of his own, our own, and most other people’s occasional thoughts upon the visible reward which one may expect for a lifetime of living.

Dear “ Wayfarer,”—What about giving us a “ Common Round ” discourse on ■ weird and wonderful epitaphs? Morton in his “In Search of ” gives some funny ones, but the following one appearing in the Fortrose cemetery can ' hold its own with most: “To the memory of Janet , murdered by her husband.” This poor soul was the wife of a murderer, who was hanged here many years ago. —I am, etc., Interested. This, it will be granted, a most exemplary model of grave-stone composition. It contains within a few words all that we know, or need to know, of the subject of its discourse,—-the name; the circumstances of death (the date, we may assume, is there also). These are the particulars which the legal world demands of the dead. And for the visitor they provide the material of his own musings.

There must be material for the seeker of epitaphs in this province, but countries of a younger growth seem to have had less time for moralising upon the grave. Life is, perhaps, no less precious, but it is a more exacting business, requiring such close attention to the mere task of sustaining it that there is opportunity for rumination upon its departure. The cemetery at Queenstown provides its quota of interesting tombs, some of them of most pathetic import. One corner is devoted to the graves of Chinese who were among the earliest Otago colonists, but the messages which the worn wooden headpieces bear are not revealed to the non-Asiatic visitor. There is, here, a stone to the memory of a faithful shepherd, who perished iu the snow on Mount Gilbert in 1867, when trying to save his flock. And, accompanied by its sad little verse expressing faith in an ultimate reunion is a memorial to a 10-year-old boy who “ died from the effects of a fall from his poney (sic) ” many years ago. Among the inscriptions one would select, for its terse summation of 'the Christian philosophy, the following:—

Life is short, death is sure, Sin the wound, but Christ the cure.

At Norfolk Island is a grave which seems complementary in a sense to that almost equally isolated one of which our contributor speaks. It bears witness to the unsentimental justice, both'of word and deed, administered by our rude forefathers.

Pray for the soul of Michael Murpfiy, late of Dublin, who died suddent (sic) on the third of October. 1830. He was, hanged.

A similar misfortune is recounted in what could scarcely be called glowing, rounded phrases, in “Everyman’s Encyclopaedia,” which concludes its sketch of the career of Roger Casement with a striking economy of line.

Tried in London for high, treason, June 26-29, and, previously degraded from all his honours, was received into the Church of Rome and hanged at Pentonville, August 3, 1916.

Mr Wyndham Lewis mentions iu one of bis books the record of a departure in similar haste, but caused by circumstances of a less definite, character. It appears on a white man’s grave in Hindustan: “Here lies a European who died “ through trying to hustle the Orient,”

The adnvonitory epitaph has its place in every graveyard, a warning to the idle visitor that he, however alert his tissues with full life, cannot escape corruption. A favourite injunction reads:— Slop, traveller, see here I lie; As you are now so once was I. As I am now. so must you be; Therefore prepare to follow me. It must surely be a morbid misanthropist who elects that when he is no longer present in person to administer a gloomy reminder of man’s common end he may still impress his dismal philosophy on the unwary. One has a lot of sympathy with the visitor who retaliated by adding a postscript to this epitaph: —

To follow you I am content, If I but knew which way you went.

There is one journey which few, even among the most hardened and experienced travellers, cannot but contemplate with a certain amount of apprehension, but humour can enliven if not delay it.

Fo£ Communists and Socialists there must, indeed, in this world so slow in turning towards their conflicting ideals, be a definite satisfaction in thinking on the mortality of man. The Great Leveller, as the moralists so sententiously and, we make bold to say, so unconvincingly point edit in their efforts to satisfy us with our impoverishment, makes no distinction between millionaire and charlady. Hence the smug complacency of a claim that is made in a graveyard in South Devon: — Here lie I by the chancel door. Here lie I because I’m poor. The farther In, the more you'll pay, Here He I as warm as they. A poet of the seventeenth century hymned his equality of breeding with the lordly of the earth in these lines:— Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior ; The son of Adam and of Eve: Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher? Nor, for that matter, is Bourbon or Nassau likely to lie lower. , And writing of charladies, what better expression could be given to their ultimate abandonment of the mop and bucket than the “Epitaph on a Tired Woman ” which a London periodical printed recently? Here lies a poor woman who always was tired. She lived In a house where help was not hired. Her last words on earth were “ Pear friends, I am going, To where there’s no washing, nor cooking, nor sewing, But everything there will be jnst to my wishes, For where they don’t eat, there’s no washing up dishes, I’ll be where loud anthems will always be ringing, But as I’ve no voice, I’ll got quit of singing. Don’t mourn.,for me now, don’t mourn for mo never, I’m going to do nothing for Ever and Ever! ” It is not everyone’s conception of a Valhalla, hut if ever a heroine deserved the privilege of nominating her destination, it is the Queen of the Culinary Kingdom.

Finally it seems appropriate to quote the last lii.es on a workman who, having an intimate knowledge of the matters on which we write, pursued his task with such philosophical content as his famed predecessor in “ Hamlet,” and, apparently, accepted his dismissal with a good grace. This epitaph on a gravedigger was provided hy a Yorkshire reader of the Spectator: — Near to this stone lies Archer (John), Late Sexton (I aver), "Who without tears thirty-four years Did carcasses Inter. But death at last, his labour past, Unto old John did say: “ Leave oft thy trade, be not afraid, But come forthwith away.” Without reply, nor asking “Why?” The summons he obeyed. In 1700 and 68 Resigned his life and spade. It behoves us with no greater apology nor, we suspect, louder lamentations from the multitude than attended the obsequies of Archer (John) to lay aside our pen from this gloomy task.