QUEER EPITAPHS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 196, 2 November 1871, Page 7

QUEER EPITAPHS.

By D. "M. (From the " Qlasjow Weekly Herald")

Next to Scripture, it seems as if rhyme had the moat quieting influence over the departed. " Thorpe's body " might rise, hut " Thorpe's corpse " is felt to be laid at rest. It seems, at any rate, to be a, great additional recommendation to some people that an epitaph rhymes. "Here lies Elizabeth Wise. • She died of thunder sent from hexven Seventeen hundred and seventy-sevan." Another runs : — "J. P. P. Provost of Dundee Hallelujah Halle] ujee." " Here I lies, killed by the excise," is the epitaph on the tombstone of a notorious smuggler. " K-jre I lay*, killed by a chaise,' i* an inscription in Frodsham cemetery over a departed hostler. Another runs :—: — " Here lie I, Jonathan Fry, Killed by a s IcyRocket in my eye."

The following was copied from a tombstone in the " East Neuk o' Fife," Crail, I think :—: — " Here lies my guidand gracious Auntie Wham death has packed in his portmanty Three score and teu years God did gift her. Anil here she lira wlla. tleil daur3 \\l\j liefi" "The difficulty of getting a name worked into rhyme has soaietimes driven the monumental poet to desperate expedients.

The following is from a Cheshire churchyard : — " Here lie the remains of Thomas WOodhen Moat amiable of husbands, most excellent of

men," — • and has the following foot-note appended :—: — "iV.s.— For 'WoodAera' please read Woodcocfc.'"x

This reminds one of the wind up of little Pet Marjories sonnet —

'■ His nose's cast is of the Roman, He is a vpry pretty woman ; (I could not get a rhyme for Roman, ' So was obliged to call him ' woman.')' 1

If monuments are not places pn. which to record vindieti\;eness, still' less are they places^ on which to inscribe jokes. Yet the thing is notr without precedent: *- " Here Ue».Mistre9s aiargfc. Sqaear? •- She would if she oould, but she couldn't atopi here.' Two bad legs and a baddhh cough : < Ifc was the legs that carried her off."

On another old lady's tomb in the church-yard of Nestou'St. Nicholas; is the couplet — Here lies a certain Elizabeth Masin % i Wha lived an old Maid and died an old Mann.

The living seems to bo cracking jokea with the dead in the following inscription taken from a stone in Hertford Cemetery :—: — WOMAN. " Grieve not for :ne, my hnsbn-nd dear, I am not dead, bnt s'eepeth here ; With patience »\ait, piepare to die, And in a short time you'll come to L" SUN. " I am not grieved, my dearest life ; Sleep on : I have got another wife. Therefore I cannot coma to thee, For I must go arid live with she." In one of the cemeteries in Paris is to be seen the fallowing quaint epitaph on husband and wife: — "I am anxiously expecting you. — A..D. 1827. Here I am.— A D. 18d7." The good wo'inan had taken forty years to make up her mind to follow. The following is (Votn Kincardiueshii'O: — " Wha is't lies here ?" " Pipsr Jock You needna' speer." "O lad, is thnb you ?'' "Ay, but I'm deid noo." " Rise Jock, and gies a. rune." "Ah I man, I cahna win." A curious story is told of the widow of a celebrated manufacturer of fireworks. When about to erect a monument to her husband's memory, ahe Nisited two or three cetne-rerie- to fhooae a style and »et 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 tbe only p!aoa - Where his own woiks <ue excelled." She was so charmed with this sentiment that she adopted it Accordingly, on her husband's monument the following inscription appeared in duQ time : — Erected by his Spouse, to the* Memory of A -B-, Manufacturer of Fireworks. He has gone to the only plaoe Where his own works are excelled. Designedly, however, some epitaphs are more candid, tlian complimentary :—: — " Here lies the body of P. JLTTaslcell, He lived a knave and died a rascal " —

must have been written by some one not troubled with the" "Nil nisi bonum" complaint.

The famous Greek scholar Porson wrote the following epitaph, on a P&ilow of his own College: — Here lies a Doctor of Divinity, Who was a Fellow, too, of Tii iity, He knew us much about Divinity As other Fellows do of Trinity."

On the tomb of the pompous au;hor of the " History of Music " is the brief but suggestive inscription: — Here lies Sir John Hawkins, Without his slwes or his stawkiiigs.

But nothing, in this way, equals the epitaph which Burns prepared for Andrew Turner :—: — " In seventeen lmndor an'_ 49 B.itan rook stuff to uiak'a swine. Ami ctiist it in a corner ; But wilily he changed his plan, - And shaped it something like a man, And ca'ed it Andrew Turner."

On the gravestone of poor Hood, in Kensal Green Ceinateij, there is the pimple but eloquent inscription —

"He sang ; Thk Song op * Shlrt.'"

Huw fine also is that inscription on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in the £>-eat Cathedral xvhkh he built: —

Si monumentum -requiris, circumspice I (If you want to see hi- monument, look around.)

May our lives be such that when we also retire, " each to -lm chamber in the silent halls of death " .the same inscriptions might be written over us.