1819-20
THE SKETCH BOOK
RURAL FUNERALS
by Washington Irving
Here's a few flowers! but about midnight more:
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night;
Are strewings fitt'st for graves-
You were as flowers now wither'd; even so
These herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
CYMBELINE.
AMONG the beautiful and simple-hearted customs of rural life which
still linger in some parts of England, are those of strewing flowers
before the funerals, and planting them at the graves of departed
friends. These, it is said, are the remains of some of the rites of
the primitive church; but they are of still higher antiquity, having
been observed among the Greeks and Romans, and frequently mentioned by
their writers, and were, no doubt, the spontaneous tributes of
unlettered affection, originating long before art had tasked itself to
modulate sorrow into song, or story it on the monument.
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