Lancashire.
LIVERPOOL.
On John Scott, a Brewer.
Poor John Scott lies buried here,
Tho’ one he was both stout and hale,
Death stretched him on this bitter bier,
In another world he hops about.
MANCHESTER.
My death did come to pass,
Thro’ sitting on the derty grass;
Here I lie where I fell,
If you seek my soul go to Hell.
On a profligate Mathematician.
Here lies John Hill,
A man of skill,
His age was five times ten:
He ne’er did good,
Nor ever would,
Had he lived as long again.
SOUTHWORTH.
The world is full of crooked streets,
Death is a place where all men meets,
If life were sold, that men might buy,
The rich would live, the poor must die.
OLDHAM.
On Paul Fuller and Peter Potter, buried near each
other.
’Tis held by Peter and by Paul,
That when we fill our graves or urns,
Ashes to ashes crumbling fall,
And dust to dust once more returns.
So here a truth unmeant for mirth,
Appears in monumental lay;
Paul’s grave is filled with Fuller’s earth,
And Peter’s crammed with Potter’s clay.
ROCHDALE.
Tim’s Bobbin’s Grave.
“Here lies John and with him Mary,
Cheek by jowl and nevery vary;
No wonder they so well agree,
Tim wants no punch, and Moll no tea.”
Leicestershire.
In Nichols’s history of Leicestershire, is inserted the following Epitaph, to the memory of Theophilus Cave, who was buried in the chancel of the Church of Barrow-on-Soar:—
“Here in this Grave there lies a Cave,
We call a Cave a Grave;
If Cave be Grave, and Grave be Cave,
Then reader, judge, I crave,
Whether doth Cave here lie in Grave,
Or Grave here lie in Cave:
If Grave in Cave here buried lie,
Then Grave where is thy victory?
Go, reader, and report here lies a Cave,
Who conquers death, and buyes his own Cave.”
MELTON MOWBRAY.
The world’s an Inn, and I her guest:
I’ve eat and drank and took my rest,
With her awhile, and now I pay
Her lavish bill and go my way.
BARKBY.
Francis Fox, vicar, died 1662.
My debt to Death is paid unto a sand,
And pay thou must, that there doth reading stand;
And am laid down to sleep, till Christ from high
Shall raise me, although grim Death stand by.
HARBY.
Mary Hill, died 1784.
With pain and sickness wasted to a bone,
Long time to gracious Heaven I made my moan;
Then God at length to my complaint gave ear,
And sent kind Death to ease my pain and care.
Physicians could no longer save the life
Of a tender mother and a loving wife.