Mooney.] 286 [Oct. 19, 
fashion around light sticks about a yard in length, the scallops pointing 
upward, These ar carried in procession on each side of the coffin, and ar 
afterwards driven into the earth above the newly-made grave so as to form 
two lines with the tops meeting in the centre. From a passage in Carle- 
ton* it would seem that in some parts of the north the garlands ar fixd 
upon hoops instead of upon straight sticks. 
In several of the larger towns there was formerly an ancient stone 
cross standing in some prominent place, and around this every funeral 
procession passing through the town made a circuit. Most of these 
crosses hav long disappeard, but the old custom is stil kept up, the circuit 
being made around,the former site. Thus at Navah, in Meath, the proces- 
sion goes round the market-place, where it is probable a cross once stood, + 
and a corpse passing through Fethard, in Tipperary, ‘‘is always carried 
round the pump, because the old cross stood there in former times; and 
there is a certain gate of the same town—for a considerable part of the 
fortifications remain—through which a corpse is never carried, though in 
the direct course, because it was through that gate that-Cromwell entered 
the town.’’t 
A curious observance in connection with the funeral of a murderd per- 
son is described by Carleton as formerly existing in the north of Ireland. 
The custom seems now to be extinct: ‘In Ireland when a murder is 
perpetrated, it is usual, as the funeral proceeds to the graveyard, to bring 
the corpse to the house of him who committed the crime, and lay it down 
at his door, while the relations of the deceased kneel down and with an 
appalling solemnity utter the deepest imprecations and invoke the justice 
of heaven on the head of the murderer. This, however, is usually omitted 
if the residence of the criminal be completely out of the line of the 
funeral, but if it be possible, by any circuit, to approach it, this dark 
ceremony is never omitted. In cases where the crime is doubtful, or 
unjustly imputed, those who are thus visited come out, and laying 
their right hand upon the coffin, protest their innocence of the blood of 
the deceased, calling God to witness the truth of their asseverations ; but 
in cases where the crime is clearly proved against the murderer, the door 
is either closed, the ceremony repelled by violence, or the house aban- 
doned by. the inmates until the funeral passes.’’§ In the funeral described 
the mourners wore a profusion of crimson ribbons, to show that they bore 
the corpse of a murderd man, and on passing the spot where he receivd 
his death-blow the coffin was again laid down and the caoine raisd. 
The spirit of the corpse last buried must fairead" ’n teampoll (foroo’n 
*Wm. Carleton, ‘The Party Fight and Funeral,” in Traits and Stories of the Irish 
Peasantry, ii, 128, London, 1853. 
+ W.R. Wilde, The Boyne and the Blackwater, 134, 2d ed., Dublin, 1850. 
{Mr. and Mrs. 8. C. Hall, Ireland Picturesquely Illustrated, i, 231, note, n. d., New 
York, 
§Wm. Carleton, ‘‘ The Party Fight and Funeral,’ in Traits and Stories of the Irish 
Peasantry, ii, 145, London, 1853. 
