Epitaphs

The English people are very proud of their curious inscriptions on tombstones and say that “in this Britain, outstrips all other countries in humor and originality.”

It may really be so. Here are some of the inscriptions.

In the churchyard at Stretton, in Shropshire, one of the epitaphs reads:

On a Thursday she was born,

On a Thursday made a bride,

On a Thursday her leg was broken,

And on a Thursday she died.

In the churchyard of Wistantor, in Shropshire, there is a woman buried who died at the age of 77. But she was too vain, or too shy, to allow this rather large figure to appear on her tombstone, so she carefully disguised her true age in the following lines:

Twice six, twice seven,

Twice twenty and eleven.

Here are some more curious epitaphs:

Here lies John Racket

In his wooden jacket.

He kept neither horses nor mules,

He lived like a hog,

He died like a dog,

And left all his money to fools.

* * *

Here lies what’s left

of William Daugh,

With us he is no more;

For what he thought was H2O

Was H2SO4.

* * *

Here lies John Hill, a man of skill,

His age was five times ten;

He never did good,

Nor never would.

Had he lived as long again.

* * *

Epitaph of a Pottery Shop Owner

Beneath this stone lies

Catherine Grey

Changed to a lifeless

lump of clay.

Who knows, but in

the course of years

In some tall pitcher or brown pan

She in her shop may be again.

* * *

Poems and epitaphs are but stuff:

Here lies Robert Burrows, that’s enough.

In a churchyard at Marie there is the following puzzle:

Here lies the son, here lies the mother,

Here lies the daughter with the father,

Here lies the sister, here lies the brother,

Here lies the wife and the husband to her,

And but three persons buried here.

On the 7th of August, 1905, a washerwoman named Catherine Alsopp was found hanged by her Sunday dress in her bedroom. She had previously composed her own epitaph, which she left written in pencil on a piece of paper.

Here lies a poor woman who always was tired,

She lived in a house where help was not hired,

Her last words on earth were: “Dear friends, I am going

Where washing isn’t done, nor sweeping, nor sewing.

But everything there is exact to my wishes

For where they don’t eat, there’s no washing of dishes...

Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never,

I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.