And still a better one I found in the churchyard of St. Margaret's at
Lynn, to John Holgate, aged 27, who died in 1712:
He hath gained his port and is at ease,
And hath escapt ye danger of ye seas,
His glass is run his life is gone,
Which to my thought never did no man no wronge.
That last line is remarkable, for although its ten slow words have apparently fallen by chance into that form and express nothing but a little negative praise of their subject, they say something more by implication. They conceal a mournful protest against the cruelty and injustice of his lot, and remind us of the old Italian folk-song, "O Barnaby, why did you die?" With plenty of wine in the house and salad in the garden, how wrong, how unreasonable of you to die! But even while blaming you in so many words, we know, O Barnaby, that the decision came not from you, and was an outrage, but dare not say so lest he himself should be listening, and in his anger at one word should take us away too before our time. It is unconsciously humorous, yet with the sense of tears in it.
But there is no sense of tears in the unconscious humour of the solemn or pompous epitaph composed by the village ignoramus.
A century ago the village idiot was almost always a member of the little rustic community, and was even useful to it in two distinct ways. He was "God's Fool," and compassion and sweet beneficent instinct, or soul growths, flourished the more for his presence; and secondly, he was a perpetual source of amusement, a sort of free cinema provided by Nature for the children's entertainment. I am not sure that his removal has not been a loss to the little rural centres of life.
Side by side with the village idiot there was the pompous person who could not only read a book, but could put whole sentences together and even make rhymes, and who on these grounds took an important part in the life of the community. He was not only adviser and letter-writer to his neighbours, but often composed inscriptions for their gravestones when they were dead. But in the best specimen of this kind which I have come upon, I feel pretty sure, from internal evidence, that the buried man had composed his own epitaph, and probably designed the form of the stone and its ornamentation. I found this stone in the churchyard of Minturne Magna, in Dorset. The stone was five feet high and four and a half broad—a large canvas, so to speak. On the upper half a Tree of Knowledge was depicted, with leaves and apples, the serpent wound about the trunk, with Adam and Eve standing on either side. Eve is extending her arm, with an apple in her open hand, to Adam, and he, foolish man, is putting out a hand to take it. Then follows the extraordinary inscription:
Here lyeth the Body
Of Richard Elambert,
Late of Holnust, who died
June 6, in the year 1805, in the
100 year of his age.
Neighbours make no stay,
Return unto the Lord,
Nor put it off from day to day,
For Death's a debt ye all must pay.
Ye knoweth not how soon,
It may be the next moment,
Night, morning or noon.
I set this as a caution
To my neighbours in rime,
God give grace that you
May all repent in time.
For what God has decreed,
We surely must obey,
For when please God to send
His death's dart into us so keen,
O then we must go hence
And be no more here seen.
ALSO
Handy lyeth here
Dianna Elambert,
Which was my only daughter dear,
Who died Jan. 10, 1776,
In the 18th year of her age.
Poor Diana deserved a less casual word!