death in the Kaim of Derncleugh, Meg Merrilies unbars the door, and lifts the latch, saying:
Open lock, end strife,
Come death, and pass life.
As to the touching of the corpse by those who come to look at it, this is still expected by the poor of Durham on the part of those who come to their house while a dead body is lying in it, in token that they wished no ill to the departed, and were in peace and amity with him.
No doubt this custom grew out of the belief, once universal among northern nations, that a corpse would bleed at the touch of the murderer. In King James the First’s Dæmonology we read: “In a secret murder, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the murderer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to Heaven for revenge of the murderer.” And it is mentioned in a note to chap. v. of the Fair Maid of Perth, that this bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evidence of guilt in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh as late as 1668.
The practice of covering or removing the looking-glass from the chamber of death extends into the northern counties of England, and this not only for the cause assigned above. The invisible world trenches closely upon the visible one in the chamber of death; and I believe that a dread is felt of some spiritual being imaging himself forth in the blank service of the mirror.[1]
I may here mention that in Denmark it is forbidden to bury a corpse in the clothes of a living person, lest as the clothes rot that person wastes away and perishes. It is said there, too, that one must not weep over the dying, still less allow tears to fall on them; it will hinder their resting in the grave.
- ↑ I suspect that the true reason for shrouding the looking-glass before a funeral is that given me in Warwickshire, that if you look into a mirror in the death chamber you will see the corpse looking over your shoulder. I have heard the same superstition in Devonshire. In the West Riding of Yorkshire there is a strong feeling against burying a woman with her rings or jewellery. A gentleman told me that when his mother died he was desirous of leaving on her hand her wedding-ring, but was reproved for the wish by the women who laid her out. “Ye mun no send her to God wi’ her trinkets about her,” they said.—S. B. G.
