Again, in Oldenburg, it is said that cornstalks must be scattered about a house in which death has entered, as a charm against further misfortune, and in the Tyrol an elder bush is often planted on a newly-made grave.

In our own country the practice of crowning the dead and of strewing their graves with flowers has prevailed from a very early period, a custom which has been most pathetically and with much grace described by Shakespeare in “Cymbeline” (Act iv. sc. 2):—­

            “With fairest flowers,
  Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
  I’ll sweeten thy sad grave:  thou shalt not lack
  The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor
  The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
  The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
  Out-sweeten’d not thy breath:  the ruddock would,
  With charitable bill, O bill, sore-shaming
  Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie
  Without a monument! bring thee all this;
  Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are none,
  To winter-ground thy corse.”

Allusions to the custom are frequently to be met with in our old writers, many of which have been collected together by Brand.[7] In former years it was customary to carry sprigs of rosemary at a funeral, probably because this plant was considered emblematical of remembrance:—­

  “To show their love, the neighbours far and near,
  Follow’d with wistful look the damsel’s bier;
  Spring’d rosemary the lads and lasses bore,
  While dismally the parson walked before.”

Gay speaks of the flowers scattered on graves as “rosemary, daisy, butter’d flower, and endive blue,” and Pepys mentions a churchyard near Southampton where the graves were sown with sage.  Another plant which has from a remote period been associated with death is the cypress, having been planted by the ancients round their graves.  In our own country it was employed as a funeral flower, and Coles thus refers to it, together with the rosemary and bay:—­

“Cypresse garlands are of great account at funerals amongst the gentler sort, but rosemary and bayes are used by the commons both at funerals and weddings.  They are all plants which fade not a good while after they are gathered, and used (as I conceive) to intimate unto us that the remembrance of the present solemnity might not die presently (at once), but be kept in mind for many years.”

The yew has from time immemorial been planted in churchyards besides being used at funerals.  Paris, in “Romeo and Juliet”, (Act v. sc. 3), says:—­

  “Under yon yew trees lay thee all along,
  Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground;
  So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,
  Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves,
  But thou shall hear it.”

Shakespeare also refers to the custom of sticking yew in the shroud in the following song in “Twelfth Night” (Act ii. sc. 4):—­