The custom of females attending funerals, which was formerly universal, has disappeared entirely from the town, but in the country it is still occasionally observed, the mourners being attired in long black cloaks with hoods that almost conceal the face. The funeral feast, when there is one, takes place when the cortège returns to the house of mourning. A chair is placed at the table where the deceased was wont to sit, and a knife, fork, plate, etc., laid before it as if he were still present.[48] Tea and coffee, wine, cider, and spirits, cakes, bread and cheese, and more especially a ham, are provided for the occasion. The last-named viand was, in bygone days, almost considered indispensable, and where they kept pigs,--and almost everyone then kept pigs--every year, when the pig was killed, a ham was put away “in case of a funeral” and was not touched till the next pig was killed and another ham was put in readiness; and from thence it comes that “màngier la tchesse à quiqu’un”--“to eat a person’s ham”--is proverbially used in the sense of attending his funeral. The first glass of wine is drunk in silence to the memory of the departed, whose good qualities are then dilated upon, but the conversation soon becomes general, and it not unfrequently happens that more liquor is imbibed than is altogether good for the guests. In fact the mourners had generally to be conveyed home in carts.[49] From ancient wills it seems that money was sometimes left for the purpose of clothing a certain number of poor, and from the ordinances of the Royal Court prohibiting begging at funerals, or even the voluntary giving of alms on these occasions, it is not improbable that the custom of distributing doles was, at one time, almost general. There is no trace of it in the present day. Till within the last few years it was almost an universal custom, even among the dissenters, for the members of a household in which a death had occurred, to attend their parish church in a body on the first or second Sunday after the funeral, and the custom is still kept up to a certain extent. If they are regular frequenters of the church they occupy their usual seats, if not, they are placed, if possible, in some conspicuous part of the building, where they remain seated during the entire service, not rising even during those portions of the service in which standing is prescribed by the rubric. This is called “taking mourning,” in French “prendre le deuil.” Widows remain seated in church during the whole of the first year of their widowhood.