Funerals.—It was customary to place a plate of salt, the smoothing iron, or a clod of green grass on the breast of a corpse, while laid out previous to being coffined. This, it was believed, kept it from swelling. A candle was left burning beside it all night. When it was placed in the coffin and taken away on the day of the funeral, the boards on which it had been lying were left for the night as they were, with a drink of water on them, in case the dead should return and be thirsty. Some put the drink of water or of milk outside the door, and, as in Mull and Tiree, put a sprig of pearlswort above the lintel to prevent the dead from entering the house.
Funerals.—It was customary to place a plate of salt, the smoothing iron, or a clod of green grass on the breast of a corpse, while laid out previous to being coffined. This, it was believed, kept it from swelling. A candle was left burning beside it all night. When it was placed in the coffin and taken away on the day of the funeral, the boards on which it had been lying were left for the night as they were, with a drink of water on them, in case the dead should return and be thirsty. Some put the drink of water or of milk outside the door, and, as in Mull and Tiree, put a sprig of pearlswort above the lintel to prevent the dead from entering the house.
When coffining the corpse every string in the shroud was cut with the scissors; and in defence of the practice there was a story that, after burial, a woman’s shade came to her friends, to say that all the strings in her shroud had not been cut. Her grave was opened, and this was found to be the case.
The only instance the writer has heard of Cere-cloth, that is, cloth dipped in wax in which dead bodies were wrapped, being used in the Highlands, is, that the Nicholsons of Scorrybreck, in Skye (a family said to be of Russian descent throughNeacal mòrwho was in Mungastadt), had a wax shirt (Leine Chéir) which, from the friendship between themselves and the chief of the Macleods, was sent for from Dunvegan on every occasion of a death.