Certainly these little burial-grounds are not tended and cared for as in tidier lands. The graves are scattered about amidst weeds and nettles, sometimes thistles grow so thickly about the crosses that they half hide them from sight. But in spring-time, before the grass is high, I have found some of them nearly buried in daffodils and irises running riot all over the place. The shadowy crosses look down upon all that wealth of colour as though wondering if God Himself had adorned their forsaken graves.
The Rumanian peasant is averse from any unnecessary effort. What must happen happens, what must fall falls. Therefore, if a cross is broken, why try to set it up again?—let it lie! the grass will cover it, the flowers will cluster in its place.
On Good Friday morning I was roaming through one of these village churchyards. To my astonishment I found that nearly every grave was lighted with a tiny thin taper, the flame of which burnt palely, incapable of vying with the light of the sun. Lying beside these ghostly little lights were broken fragments of pottery filled with smouldering ashes, that sent thin spirals of blue smoke into the tranquil spring air. On this day of mourning the living come to do honour to their dead according to their customs, according to their Faith.
A strange sight indeed! all those wavering little flames amongst the crumbling graves. Often did I find a candle standing on a spot where all vestige of the grave itself had been entirely effaced; but it stood there burning bravely—some one remembering that just beneath that very inch of ground a heart had been laid to rest.
An old woman I found that morning standing quite still beside one of those tapers—a taper so humble and thin that it could scarcely remain upright—but with crossed arms the old mother was watching it, as though silently accomplishing some rite.
Approaching her, I looked to see of what size was the grave she was guarding, but could perceive no grave at all! The yellow little taper was humbly standing beside a bunch of anemones. All that once had been a tomb had long since been trodden into the ground.
The cloth round the old woman's head was white, white as the blossoming cherry-trees that made gay this little garden of God; white were also the flowers that grew beside the old woman's offering of love.
"Who is buried there?" I asked.
"One of my own," was her answer. "She was my daughter's little daughter; now she is at rest."
"Why is the grave no more to be seen?" was my next inquiry.