QUEER EPITAPHS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 196, 2 November 1871, Page 8

QUEER EPITAPHS.

By D. "M.

(From the " Glasjow Weekly Herald.")

Next to Scripture, it seems as if rhyme had the most quieting influence over the departed. " Thorpe's body " might rise, but " Thorpe's corpse " is felt to be laid at rest. It seems, at any rate, to be a great additional recoinmendalion to some people that an epitaph rhymes.

*' Here lies Elizabeth Wise. • She died of thunder sent from heaven Seventeen hundred and seventy -sev.*n." Another runs : — "J. P. P. Provost of Dundee Hallelujah Hallelujee."

" Here I lies, killed by the excise," is the epitaph on the tombstone of a notorious smuggler. " Hjre I lays, killed by a chaise,' r* an iuscriptiou in Frodsham cemetery over a departed hostler. Another runs :—: — " Here lie I, Jonathan Fry, Killed by a skyRocket in my eye."

The following was copied from a tombstone in the " East Neuk o' Fife," Crail, I think :—: — " Here lies my quid and gracious Auntie

Wham death has packed in his portmanty Three score and ten years God did gift her, And here she lies wha deil 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 lie the remains of Thomas Woodhen Most amiable of husbands, most excellent of

men," — and has the following foot-note appended :: — ■ "iV.s.— For '"WoodAen' please read Woodcock.'\

This reminds one of the wind up of lifctle Pet Marjories sonnet — . ' '• His nose's cast is of the Roman, He is a very pretty woman ; i (I could not get a. ihyine for Roman, ' So was obliged to call him * woman.')" If indnuinenta are not places pn, which to record vindietia,;ene.gs, still' leas are-they places- on which to in-* scribe jokes. Yet the thing is not'J without precedent:*— " Here liea^Mistress ftlargt. Squeer ; *- She would if she oould, but she couldn't stop here. . ' Two bad legs ami a badfliih cough : It was the legs that carried her off." !

On another old lady's tomb in the church-yard of EfestouSt, Nicholas,- ia the couplet — Here lies a certain Elizabeth Afa»», ; Who lived an old Maid and diedan old Mann.

The living seeing to be cracking jokes with the dead in the Mtowiivj; inscription "taken from a stone in Hertford Cemetery :—: —

WOOIAN. " Grieve not for vie, my husbnnd dear, I am not dead, but sieepeth here ; With patience wait, prepare to die. And in a short time you'll come to L"

MAN. " I am not grieved, my dearest life ; Sleep on : I have got another wife. Therefore I cannot come to thee. For I must go and live with she. 1 '

Iv one of the cemeteries in Paris is to be seen the following quaint epitaph on husband and wife : — "I am anxiously expectin? you. — A..D. 1827.

Here I am.— A D. 18d7."

The good woman had taken forty years to make up her mind to follow.

The following ia {Yotn Kiucardiueshiro :—: —

44 Wha ist lies here ?■' "Piper. Jock You noedna' speer." "O lad, is that you?"' "Ay, Imfc I'm deid noo."

" Rise Jock, and gies a tune." " Ah 1 man, I c.ihna win."

A curious story is told of the -widow of a eelebr»t<?d manufacturer of fireworks. When about to eroct a monument to her husband's memory, ahe > isifced two or t ; ]ive cemeteries to Hiooae a style and s;et some ideas for an inscription. One epitaph, over th© grave of an eminent composer, delighted her beyond measure. Ie rau thus : — "He has gone to the only pluoa _ ■ Where his own woiks <ue excelled."

She was bo charmed with this sentiment that she adopted ifc. Accordingly, on her husband's monument the following inscription appeared iv due time : —

Erected by his Spouse, to th 9 Memory of A -B-,

Manufacturer of Fireworks.

He has s;one to the only plaoe Where hi 3 own works are excelled.

Designedly, however, some epitaphs are more candid than complimentary :—: — " Here lies the body of P. M.TTaskell, He lived a knave and died a rascal " — must have been written by some one not troubled with the" "Ml nisi lonian" complaint.

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

On the tomb of the pompous author of the " History of Music " ia th© brief but suggestive {ascription :— - Here lies Sir John Hawkins, Without his slutts or his slawTdngs.

But nothing, in this way, equals the epitaph which Burns prepared for Andrew Turner : — " In seventeen liunder an' 49 S.itan took stuff to male' a swine, Ami cuist it in a corner ; But wilily he changed his plan, And shaped it something like a man, And ca'ed ifc Andrew Turner."

On the gravestone of poor Hood, in. Kensal Green Ceinsiery, there ia the simple but eloquent inscription —

"He sang 'Thk Song of 4 Shirt.'"

How fine also is that inscription on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in the great Cathedral winch he built; —

Si monumentum -requiris, cirvumspice / (If you want to see hi, monument, look arouud.)

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