Old funeral customs
‘REMEMBER man as you pass by, as you are now so once was I; as I am now so shall you be, therefore prepare to follow me’, is a poem replicated in many versions and on many gravestones.
Its clarion call to the living to concentrate their minds on the inevitability of death is guaranteed to chill the spine of the most optimistic of souls.
Highland funerals were unlike any other, largely because of the many miles mourners and coffins had to travel. The wish to be buried at home or in the place of one’s birth was, and still is, very strong among Highlanders throughout the world.
Regardless of the distance, no effort was spared to take a body back to the family burial-ground whether by land or by sea. Seldom were coffins put onto carts as it was considered an honour by family, friends and neighbours to carry the deceased to the last resting place.
The custom in Argyll used to be that the closest relatives took the first lift of the coffin and the last on going into the graveyard. The remainder assisted with the intervening relays. In some places the deceased’s family would walk ahead dispensing whisky to anyone standing at the roadside or in doorways, by way of hospitality frequently described as ‘the darling of the Highlanders’.
At the rear of the procession there was usually a pony or two carrying panniers of food and drink to keep the mourners going during the journey. Frequently the pall-bearers would stop to rest and have refreshments.
At these traditional sites, usually near a well, cairns were built in memory of the dead.
The best example in Morvern can be seen at Clach na Criche (Gaelic for ‘the march stone’), a mile west of Fiunary, which marks the boundary of the medieval parishes of Cille Choluim Chille and Cill Fhiontain. Here, on both sides of this huge geological slab, numerous little cairns, half-hidden among the bracken, mark the place where funeral parties rested when coffins where taken from one parish to another.
Although coffins are no longer shouldered, modern hearses occasionally stop here by the Sound of Mull to allow mourners to gather stones from the shore to build simple cairn. Further examples are to be found near Blain in Moidart and Ardnamurchan and Sunart on the old ‘coffin roads, leading to St Finnan’s Isle on Loch Shiel.
For some reason which I have never found out, women were discouraged from going to the graveside. They would be present at the house for a short service but, if the coffin was being carried to the cemetery, they would accompany it only as far as the first stream but would not cross it. As late as the 1970s, I remember seeing all the women who had been present at funeral services at Kiel, Morvern, lining up at the gable end of the church until after the committal.
Long ago, when burial parties arrived at cemeteries, graves would still have to be opened. No council diggers in those days. This could not be done until the family of the deceased, who had an intimate knowledge of where their forebears lay, had decided on the position of the lair. The decision being taken, every able-bodied man would then lend a hand.
After the burial was over, the grave was filled in before anyone left; a tradition still followed in the old burial-grounds of Irine, near Roshven, St Finnan’s Isle, Cille Choireil in the Braes of Lochaber and elsewhere where modern excavators cannot go.
Until the 19th century, inscribed gravestones were the exception rather than the rule. There were two reasons. First, it was only relatively well- off families who had access to and could afford to pay a mason to produce one. Secondly, it was often considered that putting a name on a grave marker would bring misfortune to the family concerned, which is why so many graves up and down the West Coast are marked only by a small cairn or a single stone – a sentiment echoed in a Latin inscription on a stone for a 13th- century Franciscan priest, now in the Budapest museum which translated reads: ‘Stranger, do not seek my name, but when thou pass say an Ave for my soul.’
On completion of the burial, a rite, called ‘in praise of the dead’ (Gaelic Moladh mairbh) was celebrated which included the partaking of food and drink by all those present. If the family home was some distance away, the assembled company would gather at a spot outside the graveyard. This custom, which nowadays is contained in the eulogy, goes back to the very earliest times when men performed deed of valour before they died.
Refreshments are still provided but with vehicles and more hotels around, few take place outside although I have been offered whisky, cheese and oatcakes at Kiel, Morvern and in a field near Dalilea following a burial on St Finnan’s Isle.
Bagpipes used to be denounced from the pulpit as being ‘instruments of the Devil’ but, happily, this is no longer the case at funerals.