Gleanings in Graveyards: A Collection of Curious EpitaphsNorfolk, Horatio Edward
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Gleanings in Graveyards: A Collection of Curious Epitaphs
Norfolk, Horatio Edward
Epitaphs; Epitaphs -- Great Britain
Here lies Donald and his wife
Janet Mac Fee,
Aged Forty hee,
Aged thirty shee.
* * * * *
Here lieth the limbs of a lang devil,
Wha! in his time has done much evil,
And oft the ale wybes he opprest,
And blest be God he’s gone to rest.
* * * * *
John Carnagie lies here,
Descended of Adam and Eve,
If any can gang higher
He willingly gives him leave.
This epitaph is undoubtedly that from which Prior borrowed those
beautiful and well-known lines he once intended for his own monument.
* * * * *
Wha lies here?
I Johnny Dow.
Hoo! Johnny, is that you?
Ay, man, but a’m dead now.
Fifeshire.
TORRYBURN.
On a drunken Cobbler.
Enclosed within this narrow stall
Lies one who was a friend to _awl_.
He saved bad _soles_ from getting worse,
But damned his own without remorse.
And tho’ a drunken life he passed,
Yet saved his _soul_ by _mending at the last_.
Forfarshire.
CUPAR.
William Rymour.
Through Christ, T’me not inferiour
To William the Conqueror.—Rom. 8, 37. (! !)
DUNDEE.
Walter Coupar, Tailor.
Kynd commorads! here Coupar’s corpse is laid,
Walter by name, and Tayleour to his trade,
Both kind and true, and stout and honest-hearted,
Condole with me that he so soon departed.
For, Tavou, he never weyl’d and sheer
Had better parts, nor he that’s bur’yd here.
DUNDEE.
Three Scottish worthies were once appointed to compose an Epitaph on a
departed Provost: subjoined are the productions of two of them, which
were supposed to have been the means of killing the third candidate in a
fit of laughter.
Here lies the Provost of Dundee,
Here lies him, here lies he.
Hi-diddle-dum, Hi-diddle-dee,
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
* * * * *
Here lies the body of John Watson,
Read this not with your hats on,
For why—he was Provost of Dundee,
Hallelujah, Hallelujee.
MONTROSE.
Here lyes the bodeys of George Young and Isbel Guthrie, and all their
posterity for fifty years backwards.
November 1757.
Haddingtonshire.
PRESTONPANS.
William Matthison here lies,
Whose age was forty-one,
February 17, he dies,
Went Isbel Mitchell from,
Who was his married wife
The fourth part of his life.
The soul it cannot die,
Though the body be turned to clay,
Yet meet again they must
At the last day.
Trumpet shall sound, archangels cry,
“Come forth Isbel Mitchell and meet Will
Matthison in the sky.”
HADDINGTON.
If modesty commend a wife
And Providence a mother,
Grave chastity a widow’s life,
We’ll not find such another
In Haddington as Mareon Gray,
Who here doth lie till the Domesday.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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