"IN ZOILUM.
"Frustra ego te laudo, frustra me, Zoile, lædas Nemo mihi credit, Zoile nemo tibi."
PHILOBIBLION.
Indignities on the Bodies of Suicides.
—We are all aware of the popular repugnance to permitting the bodies of suicides to be interred within the "consecrated" or "hallowed" precincts of a churchyard. Burial at cross-roads was the usual mode. In many parts of Scotland such burials had to take place under cloud of night, to avoid the interference of the rabble. But it would appear from the extract given below, that public indignities were inflicted upon such corpses, to testify public detestation of this crime. The extract is taken from the Diarey of Robert Birrel, Burges of Edinburghe:
"1598, Feb. 20. The 20 day of Februar, Thomas Dobie drounit himself in the Quarrel holes besyde the Abbay, and upone the morne, he wes harlit throw the toune backward, and therafter hangit on the gallows."
Perhaps some correspondent of "N. & Q." may be able to point out similar instances of such a revolting procedure.
The "Abbay" referred to was the Abbey of Holyrood.
The "Quarrel," or Quarry holes, seem to have been fatal, in many cases, both to "man and beast;" for Sir David Lyndsay, in one of his poems, says:
"Marry, I lent my gossip my mare, to fetch hame coals,