It appears to have been customary in the early centuries of the Church in Scotland, to bury the dead uncoffined; and this custom prevailed among the poor for some time after the Reformation. It lingered in rural districts longer than in towns, and in some later than in others; but the Kirk Session records of some parishes refer to the provision of coffins for the interment of persons who were practically paupers in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. As to the mode of burial before the use of coffins became general, the General Assembly ordained, in 1563, "that a bier should be made in every country parish, to carry the dead corpse of the poor to the burial-place, and that those of the villages or houses next adjacent to the house where the dead corpse lieth, or a certain number out of every house, shall convey the dead corpse to the burial-place, and bury it six feet under the earth." The biers appear to have been of more than one kind. Some of them were mere rails upon which the corpse was laid, covered only with a pall, called in Scotland a mort-cloth. Others were wooden boxes, with the lid on one side furnished with a hinge, so that the corpse could be taken out, and lowered into the grave by ropes. In some parts of the Highlands, a long basket, made of twisted rushes, was used, and called the "death hamper." There were three pairs of loop handles, through which short iron bars were passed for convenience of carriage; and on the grave being reached, it was lowered by ropes, so arranged that it could be turned over and recovered for future use. Before the Reformation, it was the custom to bury unbaptised children apart from members of the Church, the north side of the churchyard being reserved for that purpose. This was afterwards regarded as contrary to the true principles of Protestantism, and in 1641 the Synod of Fife ordained that "all these who superstitiously carries the dead about the kirk before burial, also these who bury unbaptised bairns apart, be taken notice of and censured." Suicides and excommunicated persons were also, at one time, buried apart, and at night. In 1582, the Kirk Session of Perth refused to allow the corpse of a man who had committed suicide by drowning to be "brought through the town in daylight, neither yet to be buried among the faithful,... but in the little Inch within the water."