Thursday 12 April 2012

Parish Coffin - Easingwold

PARISH COFFIN, EASINGWOLD CHURCH.


Coffin - Craan

"In Ireland, there was a curious custom of burying the dead without coffins. “Until about the year 1818,” says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. i., “certain families, named Tracey, Doyle, and Daly, of the townland of Craan, near Enniscorthy, in the barony of Scarawalsh, in the county of Wexford, were in the habit of burying their dead uncoffined, in the graveyard attached to the Augustinian Abbey of Saint John. The bodies were brought to the place of sepulture in open coffins, with their faces uncovered. The graves were made six or more feet deep, and lined with bright green turf from the banks of the river Slaney. In these green chambers, were strewn moss, dry grass, and flowers, and a pillow of the same supported the head of the corpse when it was laid in its last earthly bed.”

Elizabeth Bulwer - Saint Julian's Norwich


Saint Julian's
monumental
inscriptions

Elizth relict of
Edw'd Bulwer
died May the 10th
1773
aged 84

Thomas Sowter - Saint Julian's Norwich


Saint Julian's
monumental
inscriptions

Sacred to the memory of
Thomas Sowter Gent
Late of this City
who resigned his breath
February 8th 1825
Aged 60 years
Also Mary beloved wife
who departed this life
February 27th 1839

Death is nothing at all


Death is nothing at all

Table Tomb
South Pickenham
© Godric Godricson
 
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918