any of the houses in our country parish, I would warn you to be mindful to take not less than a handful of their blossoms; for, less than this would bring certain destruction to the farmer’s broods of young ducks and chickens.
Our fine old church keeps up the custom that was prevalent in the days of good George Herbert, and “at great festivals is strewed and stuck with boughs,” like as was the church of “the country parson,” or that of Mr. Spectator, where “the middle aisle was a very pretty shady walk, and the pews looked like so many arbours on each side of it.” At Christmas it is decorated with holly and ivy; and mistletoe would be slily added, if Mr. Milkinsop were not preternaturally vigilant. On Good Friday it is dressed with solemn yew; and this, on Easter Day, gives place to fresh boughs and primroses, and such spring flowers as may then have bloomed. Then, on Palm Sunday, we have palm-branches—that is, the nearest imitation thereto, in the shape of willow wands with their catkins and fluffy blanket-looking buds. And, on Whit-Sunday, we are brave with boughs and flowers.
There is no modern innovation in all this. The custom has been handed down to us from antiquity, and we take it as we found it. If any should class it among the “superstitions” of our country parish, surely it is a very simple and innocent one; it is one, at any rate, with which our people would not willingly part; and one which they recognise with pleasure (not abusing it), while they bear in mind the sentence, “O all ye green things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord; praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.”
When any one dies in our country parish, the passing-bell is tolled. If you listen to its solemn tongue, you may know the sex of the departed. Three times three for a woman; three times two for a man. As the last toll dies away in faint vibrations, the labourer out in the fields who hears it, bares his head, and says, “God give him a good God-speed.” This word “God-speed” is one of our country parish sayings. It means “the leaving one’s house in order to remove to a new home;” and they use it when they change from one dwelling-place to another.
It is not the custom to toll the passing-bell for a child that dies unbaptised. Was there more of love, or superstition, in that young mother’s heart, who came to the parson of our country parish, beseeching him with earnest pleadings that the passing-bell might be tolled for her dead and unbaptised little one, and so give rest to its soul? For she fancied that until the church-bell had tolled, her child’s soul would be caged in unquiet rest in its dead body.
When a funeral approaches the church of our country parish, the solemn tolling is ceased, and a peal is rung. It has a melancholy sweetness that is very touching.
As a matter of course, the old superstition about the north side of the churchyard being under the dominions of evil spirits, has full sway in our country parish; and not a funeral ever takes place in that portion of our “God’s acre,” or has been known to take place within the memory of our oldest inhabitant. I must except, though, that story that he loves to tell, of having passed the churchyard in the dead of the night, once in the days of his youth, when he and poaching were more intimate than they ought to have been,—and being attracted by a light on the ghostly side of the churchyard,—and being overcome first by fear, and then by curiosity,—and then quietly stealing to the spot, and beholding by the flickering light of a lantern, a coffinless body being committed to the ground by two men,—and how he recognised them, and knew that the corpse was that of a woman who had been ruined and deserted, and in her despair had destroyed herself by poison. But this is an exceptional case; and the north side of our churchyard is, as yet, free from grassy mounds and hoary head-stones.
Yet does this remind me of another funeral of which the same person has told me. Our country parish is a favourite resort of the gipsies. There is plenty of grass in the green lanes for camping purposes; and the brooks are very convenient. Our hedges suffer from the intrusion; but, our hen-roosts and more valuable articles are safe; for our gipsies are grateful; and, after their own peculiar code of honour, thieve from our neighbours instead of from us. When a child is born to them, they bring it to Mr. Milkinsop to be baptised; and they themselves often come to church, and dazzle the eyes of our rustics, with handkerchiefs and waistcoats as gaily coloured as the stained-glass figures in the East window. In fact, a distant likeness might be traced between the two. Perhaps, the old parish-clerk may have reasoned this out for himself in his own peculiar fashion, and have come to associate those figures of Moses and Aaron in the painted window, with certain people whom he had both seen and known. For once, when a visitor to the church asked him if this particular window was not erected to the memory of Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, the old man replied, as he pointed to the Moses and Aaron,—
“Yes, sir; but they don’t much fature the old couple!”
But I am digressing from my gipsy, and the narrative of his death and burial, as told me by our oldest inhabitant. This gipsy was an ordinary member of his tribe, and he lay ill of a pleurisy in the camp, in our country parish. They called in a surgeon from the neighbouring town; and, after much persuasion, the surgeon bled him. The man became worse; the surgeon’s assistant came to see him, and proposed to bleed him again. But the gipsies were much averse to blood-letting; so they sent the assistant about his business, paid the surgeon’s bill, and dispensed with his further services. The man then died. He had expressed a wish to be buried in his best clothes, which were a velveteen coat with half-crowns shanked for buttons, and a waist-coat with shillings similarly shanked. But, his wish could not be carried out, as these valuable garments were stolen by a woman with whom he had lived, who forthwith decamped with her pilferings, leaving the gipsy to be buried in his second-best, without a shroud, in the very best of coffins.
