CHAPTER VII.
Death and Burial—The Gwylnos—Beer-drinking at Welsh Funerals—Food and Drink over the Coffin—Sponge Cakes at Modern Funerals—The Sin-eater—Welsh Denial that this Custom ever existed—The Testimony concerning it—Superstitions regarding Salt—Plate of Salt on Corpse’s Breast—The Scapegoat—The St. Tegla Cock and Hen—Welsh Funeral Processions—Praying at Cross-roads—Superstition regarding Criminals’ Graves—Hanging and Welsh Prejudice—The Grassless Grave—Parson’s Penny, or Offrwm—Old Shoes to the Clerk—Arian y Rhaw, or Spade Money—Burials without Coffin—The Sul Coffa—Planting and Strewing Graves with Flowers.
I.
With the growth of modern refinement the people of every land have become constantly more decorous in their grief. The effort of the primitive and untutored mind to utter its sorrow in loud and wild lamentations, and of friends and neighbours to divert the mind of the sufferer from his bereavement, gave rise to many funeral customs of which we still find traces in Wales. Pennant, while travelling in North Wales, noted, with regard to one Thomas Myddleton, a fact which he held ‘to prove that the custom of the Irish howl, or Scotch Coranich, was in use among us (the Welsh); for we are told he was buried “cum magno dolore et clamore cognatorum et propinquorum omnium.”’ No such custom now exists; but there is a very impressive rite, of a corresponding character, but religious, called the Gwylnos. It is a meeting held in the room where the corpse is lying, on the night before the funeral. The Irish cry, ‘Why did ye die?’ is replaced by pious appeals to Heaven, in which great and strong emotion is expressed, the deceased referred to in stirring sentences, and his death made a theme for warnings on the brevity of earth-life and the importance of the future life of the soul.
On the day of the funeral, however, the customs are not always in keeping with modern notions of the praiseworthy. Indulgence in beer-drinking at funerals is still a Welsh practice, and its antiquity is indicated by a proverb: ‘Claddu y marw, ac at y cwrw’—(To bury the dead, and to the beer.)[141] The collection of Welsh writings called ‘Cymru Fu’ refers to the custom thus, (to translate:) ‘Before the funeral procession started for the church, the nearest friends and relatives would congregate around the corpse to wail and weep their loss; while the rest of the company would be in an adjoining room drinking warm beer (cwrw brwd) and smoking their pipes; and the women in still another room drinking tea together.’[142] The writer here speaks of the custom in the past tense, but apparently rather as a literary fashion than to indicate a fact; at any rate, the custom is not extinct. Occasionally it leads to appearances in the police-court on the part of injudicious mourners.[143] After taking the coffin out of the house and placing it on a bier near the door, it was formerly customary for one of the relatives of the deceased to distribute bread and cheese to the poor, taking care to hand it to each one over the coffin. These poor people were usually those who had, in expectation of this gift, been busily engaged in gathering flowers and herbs with which to grace the coffin. Sometimes this dole was supplemented by the gift of a loaf of bread or a cheese with a piece of money placed inside it. After that a cup of drink was presented, and the receiver was required to drink a little of it immediately.[144] Alluding to this subject the Rev. E. L. Barnwell[145] says: ‘Although this custom is no longer in fashion, yet it is to some extent represented by the practice, especially in funerals of a higher class, to hand to those who are invited to attend the funeral, oblong sponge cakes sealed up in paper, which each one puts into his or her pocket, but the providing and distribution of these cakes are now often part of the undertaker’s duty.’
GIVING FOOD OVER THE COFFIN. (From an old drawing.)
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