June 21. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



499 



would be contradictory, to " intenible." If 

 capacious be consistent with leaky, then the "uxor 

 secret! capax" must have been rather an unsafe 

 confidante. A. E. B. 



Leeds, June 5. 1S5I. 



EARTH THROWN UPON THE COFFIN. 



(Vol. iii., p. 408.) 



The origin of this ceremony must undoubtedly 

 be sought in man's natural desire to cover a dead 

 body from the public view. The casting a handful 

 of soil on the coffin is emblematic of the complete 

 inhumation. The most ancient writings have 

 allusions to the shamefulness of a corpse lying 

 uninterred. Being thrown outside tlie walls of 

 Jerusalem, with the burial of an ass (Jeremiah xxii. 

 19.), was regarded as the worst possible fate. 



AVheatly's observations upon this point, in his 

 annotations on the burial service in the Prayer 

 Book, are as follows : 



" The casting earth upon the body was esteemed an 

 act of piety by the very heathens (iElian, Var. Hist., 

 1. V. c. 14.), insomuch that to find a body unburied, 

 and leave it uncovered, was judged amongst them a 

 great crime. (Hor. 1. i. od. 28. v. 36.) In the Greek 

 Church this his been accounted, so essential to the 

 solemnity, that it is ordered to be done by the priest 

 himself (Goar, Eiiclwlog. Offic. Exeq., p. 538.); and the 

 same was enjoined by our own rubric in the first 

 Common Prayer of King Edward VI.: ' Then the 

 priest castittff earth upon the corpse,' &c. But in our 

 present Liturgy (as altered in Queen Elizabeth's reign, 

 1559), it is only ordered that it ' sliall be cast upon the 

 hody by some standing by:'' and so it la- generally left to 

 one of the bearers, or sexton, who, according to Horace's 

 description {injecto ter pulvere, vid. supra), gives three 

 casts of earth upon the body or coffin, whilst the priest 

 pronounces the solemn form which explains the cere- 

 mony, viz. ' earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' " 



The note in Horace upon the three words 

 above quoted is very much to the point : 



" Tn sacris hoc genus sepulture tradebafur, ut si non 

 obruerctur. manu ter jacta terra, cadaveri pro sepullura 

 esset." (Vet. Schol.) 



The ancients thought that the spirit of an un- 

 buried corpse could not reach the Elysian fi.elds, 

 but wandered disconsolate by the Styx, until 

 some pious hand paid the customary funeral rites. 

 See the case of Fatroclus {Iliad, xxlii. 70. et 

 seq.). To lay the miquiet gliost, a handful of 

 earth on the bodily remains woidd suffice : 

 " Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent." 



The indignity of a public execution is much 

 aggravated by allowing tlie body of the criminal 

 to remain ex|)03ed, as in the case of the iivc sons 

 of Saul wiiose corpses were guarded by llizpah 

 (2 Sam. xxi.) ; and in our own recent custom of 

 ordering pirates and the woi'st kind of murderers, 



to be gibbeted in chains, as a monumental warn- 

 ing. 



Three or four summers ago I buried an Irish 

 reaper, who had suddenly died in the harvest- 

 fields. About half a dozen fellow-labourers, Irish 

 and Roman Catholics like himself, bore him to the 

 grave. At the words earth to earth, ashes to ashes, 

 dust to dust, they threw in handfuls of soil ; and, 

 as soon as the service was over, they filled up the 

 grave with spades which they had brought for the 

 purpose. No doubt, there was religious prejudice 

 in all this ; but their behaviour was most reverent, 

 and what they did seemed to arise from the gene- 

 rous instinct to cover the dead body of a comrade. 



Alfred Gattt. 



Wheatly on the Common Prayer (ch. xii. § 5.) 

 derives this custom from the ancients, and adds 

 that — 



" In the Greek Church the casting earth upon the 

 body has been accounted so essential to the solemnity, 

 that it is ordered to be done by the priest himself. 

 And the same was enjoined by our own rubric in the 

 first Common Prayer of King Edward VI." 



For the Greek Church AVheatly refers to Goar 

 Ritiiale Grcecorum, p. 538. The passage, which I 

 transcribe from Goar, runs as follows : — 



" Et cadaver in monumento deponitur. Sacerdos 

 vero terram batillo tollens superiiijecit cadaveri, dicens, 

 ' Domini est ti;rra et plenitudo ejus : orbis terrarum et 

 qui habitant in eo.' His peractis cadaveri superinfun- 

 dunt lampadls oleum, aut e thuribulo cinerem. Atque 

 ita ut moris est, sepulchrum operiunt dum dicuntur 

 moduli," &c. 



The following reference may also be added, 

 Goar, 556., " Officium funeris monachorum," 

 where the earth is directed to be thrown " in 

 crucis modum." N". E. E. (a Subscriber.) 



ON THE WORD 



• PRENZIE IN 



MEASURE." 



MEASURE raR 



(Vol. iii., p. 401.) 



" The first folio," says Dr. Johnson, " has in 

 both places prenzie, from which the other folios 

 made princely, and every editor may make what 

 he can." It will not be difficult, 1 conceive, to 

 find out what sense Shakspeare meant to convey 

 by this word, and to show that what he meant he 

 has expressed with suflicient accuracy, though 

 his meaning was soon after misunderstood. Our 

 language owes much of its wealth of words to the 

 talent which our great poet possessed for coining 

 them — a talent which he exercised with marvel- 

 lous tact : and if now and then some of them 

 failed for want of being properly printed, wc may 

 rather wonder that so many obtained currency^ 

 than that a few ceased to circulate soon after they 

 were first introduced. 



The idea intended to be conveyed by the word 



