Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

CHURCHYARDS AND FUNERALS.
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heard who dug the grave of the finger—whether
it was “ I, says the owl ”—nor who attended the
funeral, nor what monument was erected over the
respected member. But there, nevertheless, it
lies, and I doubt not that the porter will one day
lie beside it.
This desire of being interred with kindred dust
or with “ the faithful ones,” as they express it, is
so strong, that I have known a poor man selling
all his potatoes, and reducing himself to great
suffering, in order to pay the expense of burying
his wife in a distant churchyard among her
people; and that, too, when the minister of his
parish offered to bury her at his own expense in
the churchyard of the parish in which the widower
resided. Only a year or two ago a pauper in the
parish of K , begged another poor neighbour
to see her buried beside her family. When she
died, twelve men assembled, carried her ten miles
off, dug her grave, and paid all the expenses of
her funeral, which, had she been buried elsewhere,
would have been paid by the parish.
It is still a very common belief among the
peasantry that shadowy funeral processions pre,-