statesmen, and soldiers, and princes, and scholars equally with children
and maidens are the objects of it."
Again, in Oldenburg, it is said that cornstalks must be scattered about
a house in which death has entered, as a charm against further
misfortune, and in the Tyrol an elder bush is often planted on a newly-
made grave.
In our own country the practice of crowning the dead and of strewing
their graves with flowers has prevailed from a very early period, a
custom which has been most pathetically and with much grace described
by Shakespeare in "Cymbeline" (Act iv. sc. 2):--
"With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock would,
With charitable bill, O bill, sore-shaming
Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
Without a monument! bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse."
Allusions to the custom are frequently to be met with in our old
writers, many of which have been collected together by Brand.[7] In
former years it was customary to carry sprigs of rosemary at a funeral,
probably because this plant was considered emblematical of
remembrance:--
"To show their love, the neighbours far and near,
Follow'd with wistful look the damsel's bier;
Spring'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore,
While dismally the parson walked before."
Gay speaks of the flowers scattered on graves as "rosemary, daisy,
butter'd flower, and endive blue," and Pepys mentions a churchyard
near Southampton where the graves were sown with sage. Another plant
which has from a remote period been associated with death is the
cypress, having been planted by the ancients round their graves. In our
own country it was employed as a funeral flower, and Coles thus refers
to it, together with the rosemary and bay:--
"Cypresse garlands are of great account at funerals amongst the gentler sort,
but rosemary and bayes are used by the commons both at funerals and