FUNERALS OF INFANTS AND MAIDS.
From the birth to the death of a child the passage is often so easy that I shall make it an apology for the abruptness of the present transition. The moral accountableness of a human being, as I have observed before, does not, according to Catholic divines, begin till the seventh year; consequently such as die without attaining that age, are, by the effect of their baptism, indubitably entitled to a place in heaven. The death of an infant is therefore a matter of rejoicing to all but those in whose bosoms nature speaks too loud to be controlled by argument. The friends who call upon the parents, contribute to aggravate their bitterness by wishing them joy for having increased the number of angels. The usual address on these occasions is Angelitos al Cielo! Little Angels to Heaven—an unfeeling compliment, which never fails to draw a fresh gush of tears from the eyes of a mother. Every circumstance of the funeral is meant to force joy upon the mourners. The child, dressed in white garments, and crowned with a wreath of flowers, is followed by the officiating priest in silk robes of the same colour; and the clergymen who attend him to the house from whence the funeral proceeds to the church, sing in joyful strains the psalm Laudate, pueri, Dominum, while the bells are heard ringing a lively peal. The coffin, without a lid, exposes to the view the little corpse covered with flowers, as four well-dressed children bear it, amidst the lighted tapers of the clergy. No black dress, no signs of mourning whatever are seen even among the nearest relatives; the service at church bespeaks triumph, and the organ mixes its enlivening sounds with the hymns, which thank death for snatching a tender soul, when through a slight and transient tribute of pain, it could obtain an exemption from the power of sorrow. Yet no funerals are graced with more tears; nor can dirges and penitential mournings produce even a shadow of the tender melancholy which seizes the mind at the view of the formal and affected joy with which a Catholic infant is laid in his grave.
A young unmarried woman among us
—— “is allowed her virgin crants,[47]
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.”
In addition to the wreath of flowers, a palm-branch is put into a maiden’s hand; an emblem of victory against the allurements of love, which many a poor fair conqueror would have willingly exchanged for a regular defeat. They are dressed in every other respect like nuns, and the coffin is covered with a black velvet pall, as in all other funerals.
The preceding passage in Hamlet begins with an allusion to a very ancient custom, which is still observed in Spain at the monumental crosses erected on the highways to those who have perished by the hands of robbers.
“For charitable prayers,
Sherds, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown on her.”
This is literally done by every peasant when passing one of those rude and melancholy monuments. A heap of stones is always observed at the foot of the cross; not, however, instead of prayers, as the passage would seem to imply, but as a tale by which the number of Paternosters said by the compassionate passengers, might be reckoned. The antiquity of this Christianized custom appears, from a passage in the Book of Proverbs, to be very great. The proverb or sentence, translated as it is in the margin of the English Bible, runs thus: “As he that putteth a precious stone in a heap, so is he that giveth honour to a fool.”[48]
The Latin version which, you must know, is of great antiquity, and was made the basis of Jerom’s, about the middle of the fourth century, renders this proverb in a remarkable manner. Sicut qui mittit lapidem in acervum Mercurii; ita qui tribuit insipienti honorem. As he that casts a stone on the heap of Mercury, &c. &c. Now, bearing in mind that stones are at this day thrown upon certain graves in Spain; that, according to the passage in Shakspeare, a similar custom seems to have prevailed in other parts of Europe; and that Jerom believed he rendered the spirit of the Hebrew proverb by translating the word which the English Divines doubted, whether to construe a sling, or a heap of stones, by the phrase, acervus Mercurii; a deity, whose statues were frequently placed over sepulchres among the Romans—bearing all this in mind, I say, it appears to me that the custom of covering some graves with stones thrown at random, must have existed in the time of the writer of the Proverbs. Perhaps I may be allowed to conjecture that it originated in the punishment of stoning, so common among the Jews; that passengers flung stones, as a mark of abhorrence, on the heap which hid the body of the criminal; that the primitive Christians, many of whom were Jews, followed the same method of shewing their horror of heathen tombs, till those places came to be known, in Jerom’s time, by the appellation of heaps of Mercury; that modern Christians applied the same custom to the graves of such as had been deemed unworthy of consecrated ground; and, finally, that the frequency of highway robberies and murders in Spain detached the custom from the idea of crime, and softened a mark of detestation into one of prayer and intercession for the unfortunate victim.