The other is at Cray ford, and is as follows: 

“Here lieth the body of Peter Isnet, 30 years clerk of this parish.  He lived respected as a Pious and a Mirthful Man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding on the 31st day of March 1811, aged 70 years.  The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a Tribute to his Long and Faithful Services.

  “The age of this clerk was just three score and ten,
  Nearly half of which time he had sung out Amen!
  In his youth he was married, like other young men,
  But his wife died one day, and he chanted Amen!
  A second he took.  She departed:  what then? 
  He married and buried a third, with Amen!
  Thus his joys and his sorrows were Treble, but then,
  His voice was deep Bass as he sung out Amen!
  On the Horn he could blow as well as most men,
  So his horn was exalted in blowing Amen!
  But he lost all his wind after Three Score and Ten,
  And here with Three Wives he waits till again
  The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen!”

The habit of imitation which we have noticed in the masonry of the gravestone is even more pronounced in the epitaphs.  One of the most familiar verses is that which usually reads: 

  “Affliction sore long time I bore,
        Physicians were in vain,
  Till Death did seize and God did please
        To ease me of my pain.”

These lines, however, have undergone variations out of number, a not infrequent device being to adapt them to circumstances by such changes as—­

  “Affliction sore short time I bore,” etc.

The same idea has an extended application at the grave of Joseph Crate, who died in 1805, aged 42 years, and is buried at Hendon Churchyard: 

  “Affliction sore long time I bore,
        Physicians were in vain: 
  My children dear and wife, whose care
        Assuaged my every pain,
  Are left behind to mourn my fate: 
        Then Christians let them find
  That pity which their case excites
        And prove to them most kind.”

But the most startling perversion of the original text I saw in the churchyard at Saundersfoot, South Wales, where the stone-carver had evidently had his lesson by dictation, and made many original mistakes, the most notable of which was in the second line:—­

  “Affliction sore long time I bore,
        Anitions were in vain,” etc.

The following from Hyden, Yorkshire, is remarkable: 

“William Strutton, of Padrington, buried 18th May, 1734, aged 97 years, who had by his first wife 28 children, by his second, 17:  was own father to 45, grandfather to 86, great-grandfather to 23; in all 154 children.”

Witty tombstones, even when they are not vulgar, are always in bad taste.  Two well-known instances may suffice—­