QUEER EPITAPHS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 161, 5 April 1872, Page 6

QUEER EPITAPHS.

(Concluded, from our last.) The following was copied from a tombstone in the "East Eeuk o' Fife," Crail, I think :

" Here lies my guid and gracious Auntie Wham death has packed in his portmanfcv Three score and ten years God did gift her, And here she lies wha diel daurs lift her." The difficulty of 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 Woodhen Most amiable of husbands, most excellent of men," — and has the following footnote appended : "N.B.— For "Woodhen' please read Woodcock,"* This reminds one of the wind-up of little pet Marjorie's sonnet — " 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.')" It is an odd idea in a man to repay a slight through the epitaph on his. own tomb. Yet this was done by the French satirist Piron, who, having been refused admission into the French Aca'demy, left instructions in* his will that the following lines should be engraven on his monument: —

Ci-git Pibon qui ne fat rien, Pas meme Academicien. (Here lies Piron, who was nothing—not; even an Academician.) If monuments are not places oh wldch to record vmdictiveness, still less are they places on which to inscribe jokes. Yet the thing is not without precedent:— *' Here lies Mistress Margt. Squeer; She would if she could, but she couldn't stop here. Two bad legs and a baddish cough: It was the legs that carried her off." On another old lady's tomb in the churchyard of Boston, St. Nicholas, is the couplet— Here lies a certain Elizabeth Manh, Who lived an old Maid and died an old . 3£ann. The : living seems to be cracking jokes with the dead in the following inscription taken from a stone in Hertford Cemetery : woman. " Grieve not for me, my husband 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 oh.: I have got another wife. ,! Therefore I cannot come to thee, For I must go and live with she." lii one of the cemeteries in Paris is to be seen the following quaint epitaph on husband and wife:— "I am anxiously expecting you.—a.d. 1827. ' Here I am.—A;DJ 1867. The good woman had taken forty years to make up her mind to follow. The following.is from Kincardinshire-r----"Wfcais't lies here?" " Piper Jock. You needna' speer."' > " 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 of a celebrated manufacturer of fireworks. When about <io 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 ran thus: —

" He 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 the 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 are 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 nisibonwni" complaint.

The famous Greek scholar Porson wrote; the following epitaph on a Fellow of his own College *— " Here lies a Doctor of Divinity, - Who was a Fellow, too, of Trinity. He knew as much about Divinity As other Fellows do of Trinity." The following epitaph on the late smith and farrier of Goukthrapple, is taken from a tombstone in Bothwell churchyard : ! My sledge and hammer lies declined, My bellows-pipe hath lost its wind ; My forge extinct, may fires.decayed, And in the dust my vice is laid; My coals are spent, my iron's gone, My nails are drove, my work is done. On the tomb of the pompous author of the " History of Music " is the brief but suggestive inscription: — Here lies Sir John Hawhins, Without his -shoes or his stawlcings.

But nothing, in this way, equals the epitaph which Burns prepared for Andrew Turner: —

" In seventeen huhder.an' 49 Satan took stuff to mak' a swine, And cuist it in a corner; But wilily he changed his plan, And shaped it something like a man, And ca'ed it Andrew Turner." Much more legitimate, as a subject for joking, was the interment of the Marquis of Anglesea's leg, shot off in the battle of "Waterloo. The epitaph upon it was composed by the Eight Hon. George Canning, but was worthy of Tom Hood, and will bear repeating: — EPITAPH ON A LEG. Here rests —and let no saucy knave Presume to sneer or laugh, .To learn that mould'ring in this grave There lies —a British calf! Eor he who writes these lines is sure I That those who read the whole, i "Will find that laugh was.premature, Foe here too lies a sole. , And here five little ones repose, | Twin born : with other five ; . • j Unheeded by their brother toes, '

Who all are now alive." A leg and foot, to speak more plain, .. Lie here of one commanding; Who, though, he might his wits retain, Lost half his understanding. And when the guns, with thunder bright, Poured bullets thick as hail, Could only in this way be taught To give the foe leg bail ! And now in England, just as gay As in the battle brave, Goes to the rout, the ball, the play, ; With one. leg in the grave! Fortune in van has showed her spite, For he will still be found, Should England's sons engage in fightj Resolved to stand his ground. But Fortune's pardon I must beg. She meant not to disarm; And when she lopp'd the hero's leg

She did not seek his 7*arm — She but indulged a harmless whim : Since he could walk with one, She saw two legs were lost on him -Who never meant to run. ' In the matter of monuments' and epitaphs there are fashions, as in all things else; and the popular taste in these days runs in the direction of elegance in the stone/ and brevity and simplicity in the inscription. On many even of the most expensive tombstones nothing appears now but the name and date. When the silent inhabitant below was known to but a handful of friends and. relations, the shortest inscription suffices, as it does also in the case of those who are known to all. How fine was that answer of the Spanish prince, when asked what inscription

hould be carved upon" the.tomß of Christopher Columbus:—" Write his name," he said. ■" - • - • On the gravestone" of poor Hood, in Kensal Green Cemetery, there is the simple but eloquent inscription — "He wrote ' The Song of the Shiet.' " How' fine also is that 'inscription on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in the great Cathedral which he built:— : Si monumentum reqwiris,' circupispice ! (If you want to see his monument, • look " around.) May our lives be such that when.we also retire, " each to his chamber in the silent halls of death," the same inscription might be written over us.