CHAPTER VI
THE ORIENTATION OF GRAVES
When the roaming antiquary stops to watch the sexton dig a grave, he observes, not for the first time doubtless, that the graves all lie East and West. To the person whose tastes are not antiquarian, the matter is quite commonplace and he seldom gives it further thought. Yet, so firmly is the custom fixed as a popular institution, and so unconsciously is it obeyed, that it is only when it is perforce disregarded, in crowded cemetery or churchyard, that one’s feelings receive a slight shock by reason of the irregularity. Now these unconscious observances carry with them their certificate of age. For, as John Brand, in the opening words of his famous book, well declares, concerning such “vulgar rites”: “The strongest proof of their remote antiquity is that they have outlived the general knowledge of the very causes that gave rise to them.”
Perhaps there is a little danger of a misunderstanding: it should be made clear that it is only in modern times that folk have become unable to give any reason whatever for the custom. The earlier churchmen had an explanation to tender, though, as we shall see, it was only of secondary and derivative rank. Further, the rule was, and indeed still is, more precise in its operation than above stated, for the head of the corpse is directed towards the West and the feet towards the East. In other words, the normal disposition of the corpse, according to the ancient teaching of the Church, is that it shall face the East.
Durandus, who has already been frequently cited, states the rule, and gives as a reason that the Eastward position is properly assumed in prayer[600]. Bede explains the arrangement on the supposition that the Coming of the Great Day and of the “Sun of Righteousness” will be seen from the East, hence the dead should face the sunrise[601]. The Scriptural allusion in Zechariah, too, has often been quoted in support of the practice; the feet of the Messiah, so the verse runs, shall “stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the East[602].” Larousse, to mention but one more writer, refers to the injunction, but adds that the bodies of priests, martyrs, and bishops are laid in a reverse direction—“caput versus altare,” so that they face the West. A curious reason is assigned: churchmen of high or clerical rank are expected to rise first, and to pass onwards with the head looking West[603], a strange contradiction of Bede’s hypothesis.
Since the effective force of a rule is tested by its exceptions, we shall now glance at some breaches of conformity. With such transgressions of custom one might profitably compare the deliberate refusal to orient churches, discussed in the preceding chapter. Thus, in John Aubrey’s Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, we are assured that most of the ancient graves at Middleton Stoney, Oxfordshire, were made to lie North and South. Whether this were due to ignorance or to the spirit of opposition, the author of the statement, Dr White Kennett, was unable to say. In one of the rare and anonymous “Marprelate” tracts (A.D. 1589), now familiar to most students through Professor Arber’s admirable “English Scholar’s Library,” we read that Martin Month “would not be laid East and West (for hee ever went against the haire) but North and South: I think,” adds the tractarian, “because ‘ab aquilone omne malum,’ and the South wind ever brings corruption with it[604].” Martin Month has not lacked followers. Mr Hissey, in his Over Fen and Wold, has recorded a seventeenth century example from Lincolnshire, a stronghold of Puritanism[605]. William Glanville, who died at Wotton, near Dorking, in the year 1750, left documentary injunctions requiring, among other curious details, that he should be buried facing the North. In a case of infringement of the rule, as related by Brand, the motive, strangely enough, was not contumacy, but the desire to exhibit a visible mark of penitence and humiliation[606]. In support of this view, attention may be called to a stone coffin which is built into an exterior angle of two walls at Lindisfarne Priory church. The coffin lies South-East and North-West, and is believed to have held the body of a monk who had broken his vows.
Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, as befitted a philosopher, ordered that his executors should determine the true orientation of his grave by means of a compass (A.D. 1735). This was done, with the result that the monument appeared to be awry, though the actual error, it is affirmed, lay in the incorrect orientation of the surrounding graves[607]. One is inclined to modify this explanation; the divergence was probably caused by the different modes of orientation, the earlier graves having been most probably alined by the sun or the church fabric, while that of the antiquary was set out by the needle, and, it may be, without making allowance for the declination. In a parenthesis, an analogous case, which came under the notice of the present writer, may be given. An oblong kerbing of marble was to be placed around a grave in the churchyard of Chipstead, Surrey, and the mason was told to take his alinement from the wall of the chancel. When the task was finished the kerbing was seen to be out of line with the surrounding graves. Dispute was followed by a careful test. The kerb was true to the chancel wall, but, as was then discovered, the chancel itself was askew, when compared with the nave. Was the twist, then, of a date posterior to that of the earliest grave-mounds, and were these made parallel with the nave? I think the answer to the latter question is probably affirmative, but the puzzle of dates cannot be so readily solved. It is almost certain that none of the existing mounds is co-eval with the rebuilding or partial rebuilding of the chancel[608], but again, the present mounds may have been alined from a succession of earlier ones.
As already suggested, direct infraction of the general rule arrests the attention; were it not for this, familiarity might make us blind. So again, one may easily pass by at least two Shakespearean allusions. “Make her grave straight,” says one sexton to the other, when about to dig Ophelia’s grave[609], and, though certain commentators have considered the words to imply “Make it immediately,” there is good authority against this interpretation. The alternative reading supposes that the command is to dig the grave East and West. This rendering of the words seems very reasonable, seeing that they form part of an answer to the question whether Ophelia shall have Christian burial. “I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave straight.” The explanation is in full accord with the tradition, held in the South-East of England, that the bodies of suicides were buried in a North and South direction. The instruction given by Guiderius to Cadwal concerning the apparently dead body of Imogen is more specific:
“Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the East;
My father hath a reason for’t[610].”
The meaning probably is, “Lay his head to face the East”; although the other interpretation, “Head directed to East, feet to West,” is possible. At any rate the passage clearly shows that the orientation of graves was assumed by the poet to have been observed, even in the solitudes.
A scrap of quaint, but illuminating, evidence comes from the folk-lore of Wales, where the East wind is called “the wind of the dead men’s feet[611].” Nor is the practice of orienting graves confined to Britain. A Scandinavian folk-story makes the grave-diggers, either through stress of bad weather, or “out of mischief,” bury an unpopular person, one Jón Flak, in a grave dug North and South. Every night the dead man haunted the grave-diggers and repeated this verse: