One of the ancient customs connected with Swedish funerals was to place a small looking-glass in the coffin of an unmarried female, so that when the last trump sounds she might be able to arrange her tresses. It was the practice for Scandinavian maidens to wear their hair flowing loosely, while the matrons wore it bound about the head, and generally covered with some form of cap, hence the unmarried woman was imagined as wakening at the judgment day with more untidy locks than her wedded sisters, and more in need of a glass.
It was customary, in carrying a corpse to burial, to rest the bier at any cross which might be in the way, whilst prayer was offered up; and, indeed, it was very general to erect a cross at any spot where the bier of a celebrated person had been rested on its way to interment.
In the fifteenth century a most revolting custom originated of representing on tombs a skeleton, or worse still, a corpse in a state of corruption; this was followed by the more becoming custom of representing the effigies of corpses enveloped in shrouds tied at the head and feet.
At Skipton it was an invariable practice to bury at midnight a woman who had died at the birth of her first child; the coffin was carried under a white sheet, the corners of which were held by four women. A custom prevailed in Lancashire when a mother died within a month of the birth of her child, of taking the baby to the funeral, and holding it over the grave as though to look in.
Towards the end of the fourteenth century arose the practice of carrying a waxen effigy of the deceased either on or before the coffin in the funeral procession. The earliest instance of this practice is in the case of King Henry V., whose effigy formed the first of those figures which are still preserved in Westminster Abbey. This custom was only observed in the case of royalty, and persons of high position; the expense of a waxen representation of the deceased would prevent poor people from following it. The wax effigy of Oliver Cromwell lay in state while the body itself was being embalmed, so that most probably the actual corpse was never exposed to public view. The practice appears to have been discontinued shortly after the Restoration.
A custom prevailed and continued even down to recent years of making funeral garlands on the death of young unmarried women of unblemished character. These garlands were made sometimes of metal, and sometimes of natural flowers or evergreens, and commonly having a white glove in the centre, on which was inscribed the name, or initials, and age of the deceased. This garland was laid on or carried before the coffin during its passage to the grave, and afterwards frequently hung up in the church, generally being suspended from the roof. It was usual in the primitive church to place crowns of flowers on the heads of deceased virgins.
There was an order in the Church of England up to the year 1552, that if a child died within a month of baptism he should be buried in his chrisom in lieu of a shroud. The chrisom was a white baptismal robe with which, in mediæval times, a child, when christened, was enveloped. A sixteenth century brass in Chesham Bois Church, in Buckinghamshire, represents Benedict Lee, chrisom child, in his chrisom cloth. The inscription underneath the figure stands thus:—
Of Rogr Lee gentilma, here lyeth the son Benedict Lee
Crysom whos soule ihū pdō.
Formerly it was a general custom to erect crosses at the junction of four cross roads, on a place self-consecrated according to the piety of the age; suicides, and notorious bad characters, were frequently buried near to these, not with the notion of indignity, but in a spirit of charity, that, being excluded from holy rites, they, by being buried at cross roads, might be in places next in sanctity to ground actually consecrated.
The practice of placing a pewter plate containing a little salt on a corpse may possibly have originated in salt being considered an emblem of eternity. In Scotland the custom has generally been to place both salt and earth separate, and unmixed—the earth being an emblem of the corruptible body, and the salt an emblem of the immortal spirit. Salt has also been used to preserve a corpse. The body of Henry I., who died in Normandy, was cut and gashed, sprinkled with salt, wrapped in a bull’s hide, and brought to Reading Abbey to be buried.