India the dying are always taken from their beds and laid on the ground, it being held that no one can die peaceably except when laid on “mother earth.”
A singular circumstance has been related to me as having occurred a few years ago at a funeral, in the village of Stranton, near West Hartlepool.
The vicar was standing at the churchyard gate awaiting the arrival of the funeral party, when to his surprise the whole group, who had arrived within a few yards of him, suddenly wheeled round and made the circuit of the churchyard wall, thus traversing its west, north, and east boundaries, and making the distance some five or six times greater than was necessary. The vicar, astonished at the proceeding, asked the sexton the reason of so extraordinary a movement. The reply was as follows: “Why, ye wad no hae them carry the dead again the sun; the dead maun ay go wi’ the sun.”
This custom is doubtless an ancient British or Celtic one, and corresponds with the Highland usage of making the deazil, or walking three times round a person according to the course of the sun. Old Highlanders will still make the deazil around those to whom they wish well. To go round the person in the opposite direction, or “withershins,” is an evil incantation, and brings ill fortune.
It is curious to compare this Yorkshire custom of carrying the dead with the sun to the Welsh usage mentioned by Pennant.[1] Speaking of Skir’og, in North Wales, he says: “When a corpse is carried to church from any part of the town the bearers take care to carry it so that the corpse may be on the right hand through the way, be it nearer, or be it less trouble to go on the other side, nor will they bring it through any other way than the north gate.”[2]
It is a Northumbrian belief that three funerals constantly follow one another in quick succession, an opinion to which we
