1888.] 289 [Mooney. 
man. From that day to this the practice is never omitted, because the 
devil cannot come near the corpse which has a cross over it. 
FAmILy BurtiAL—SacrED CHuRCHYARDS AND CHARMS. 
It is the universal custom to bury all the members of a family not sim- 
ply in the same ancestral cemetery, but in the same grave, the last body 
being put down on top of those preceding it. Of course in time the grave 
becomes so fild up that each new interment disturbs the bones of those 
buried long before, where the coffins hav decayd. When the bones ar 
thus thrown up by the spade, the smaller ones ar carefully put back, while 
the larger ones, as the skul and thigh bones, ar pickd out from the heap 
and piled within or about the ancient church attachd to the cemetery. 
Every old abbey ruin in Ireland is fild with piles of bleaching skuls which 
hav accumulated in this way. Some years ago the proprietor of the estate 
on which ar situated the ruins of Mucross abbey at Killarney had a large 
pit dug, in which he buried all the ghastly remains scatterd about the 
place. The work occupied four men during five weeks, between seven 
and eight hundred cart loads being taken away.* Such a practice would 
breed contagion in almost any country but Ireland, where the constant 
sea breez carries off every pestilential vapor. Strange as the custom may 
seem, it has its origin in the strong ties of family affection, and bids fair 
to liv after the cacine and the wake ar forgotten. In one instance, in 
Meath, a woman, at her own request, was buried with her parents at 
Clady instead of with her husband at Kilcairn, because so many of his 
relativs wer buried in the same grave with him that “she was afraid her 
bones would not touch his.’”” I hav been informd by an eye-witness of a 
case, occurring during a fever epidemic, in which nine coffins, lying three 
abreast, wer placed in the same grave. The same feeling actuated the 
Choctaws and kindred tribes, who formerly ‘‘ reckoned it irreligious to 
mix the bones of a relation with those of a stranger, as bone of bone, and 
flesh of the same flesh, should be always joined together.’’} There is a 
prevalent belief that the bones thus taken up would not remain under 
ground if reinterd. In Connemara, when one coffin is put down upon 
another, a small hole is always broken in the lid of the lower coffin. The 
reason given is that if this wer not done there would soon be another 
death in the same family, but the original purpose was probably to leav a 
door through which the soul might pass in and out. This idea is also 
quite common in other parts of the world, and in the stone tombs of the 
Kassia hills, in India, the entrance slab is perforated with a round hole, 
apparently fot the same purpose.{ Throughout Ireland it is customary to 
use fragments from the old ruins in place of tombstones. 
* Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland Picturesquely Illustrated, i, 221, note, n. d., New 
York, R. Worthington, importer. 
t+James Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., 184, 1775. 
yA. W. Buckland, Cornish and Irish Prehistoric Monuments, Jour. Anth. Inst pees tanh 
London, 1880. 
