23. The Oomy Goolie Bird

You've all heard of the legendary Oomy Goolie bird* who flew backwards, not, as popular belief would have it, to keep the dust out of it's eyes, but because it was not interested in where it was going. It just wanted to see where it had been

This attitude towards life applies, with equal intensity, to a lot of us humans who are fascinated by the past.

The American tourist, who ain't got much history behind him, is probably the most afflicted person in the world with the Oomy Goolie outlook. Not that you can blame him, after all, if all your historical heroes wore six-guns and were buried up Boot Hill you'd be interested in a bit of past culture.

Anyway, this pre-occupation in what's gone before has led to a new sport. Graveyard Jogging or the Cemetery Stroll.

I am an enthusiastic Tombstone Trotter and there's nowt that keeps me more physically fit or mentally alert than an hour or two around the parish church allotments. Mainly they're on the side of a hill which keeps the muscles active and deciphering the inscriptions on the older stones keeps the brain alive.

Memorial inscriptions are naturally and generally of  religious trend but now and then appears the humour which is part of the human jig-saw. Or a descriptive piece telling exactly how the person concerned died. 

A good example of this is in the Salem Baptist Church graveyard at Speen, a small village in Bucks. Its read simply - "John Cartney, who was killed falling from his cart. 1838."

So what? I hear you mutter to each other.

Well this plain statement immediately takes you back in time to a quieter age, away from the horror of a six lane pile up, the motor-way maniac's disregard of adverse conditions, the utter frustration of being caught in a seven-mile tail-back from some road works. You're back in the days of horse drawn traffic, stacks of manure for the garden, time to breathe and the only traffic on the road is the horse and cart in front of you sedately clip-clopping home after a hard day's work in the fields. 

Thoughts of Gray's Elegy** spring to the mind, "The ploughman homeward plods his weary way" etc, and you are refreshed in mind and body. 

Then what happens? The bloke in front falls off his cart and kills himself. Or the horse treads on him and kills him.

You're back to square one and wish you hadn't read his flipping inscription.

There's a similar type of inscription in the grounds of St Mary's, the parish church of Harrow. This tells of the RAILWAY TRAIN and the dire consequences of getting in the way of it. The bloke*** who suffered these certainly had nothing to do with the inscription but somebody wanted the world to know and had it put on stone in detail. Possibly with the view of stopping the RAILWAY TRAIN from coming through Harrow as this happened in the days before Metro-land.

Some inscriptions are unintentionally funny in their mis-statements as are these two:

"Here lies the body of Thomas Vernon

Only surviving son of Admiral Vernon"

and

"Underneath this sod lies John Round

Who was lost at sea and never found"

Others are deliberately funny. Here's a couple from Cheltenham. The first, dated 1825, reads:

"Here lies John Higgs

A famous man for killing pigs

For killing pigs was his delight

Both morning, afternoon and night

Both heats and colds he did endure

Which no physician could ere cure

His knife is laid, his work is done

I hope to heaven his soul is gone"

Source:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2178703/Japanese-tourists-flock-Cheltenham-grave-obscure-C19th-pig-killer-John-Higgs.html

The second, dated 1769, is about a blacksmith:

"My sledge and hammer lies declined

My bellows pipe has lost it's wind

My forge is extinct, my fire's decayed

And in the dust my vice is laid

My coal is spent, my iron is gone

My nails are drove, my work is done"

Source: https://www.francisfrith.com/blog/the-village-blacksmith

There's a good inscription on a stone at Bromsgrove, Worcs, for a chap named Knott. A good pun is always good reading:

"Here lies a man who was Knott born

His father was Knott before him

He lived Knott, and did Knott die

Yet underneath this stone he doth lie

Knott christened, Knott begot

And here he lives and yet was Knott"

No matter where you go you'll come across the Knockers. Here's one about a miser buried in Dorchester Abbey:

"Here lies one who for medicine would not

Give a little gold, so his life was lost

I fancy that he'd wish to live again

Did he but know how much his funeral cost"

And another about a woman buried in Bideford churchyard:

"Here lies the body of Mary Sexton

Who pleased many a man but never vexed one

Not like the woman who lies under the next stone"

Nasty!

There must be thousands of pert inscriptions around the country so join the army of graveyard joggers and give free reign to your Oomy Goolie outlook. Investigate the past and enjoy the humour of these long dead poets.

I shall be very happy to print any authentic inscriptions that any of you have seen. Send 'em in to the Editor and I'll devote a page to them under the heading of Tombstone Trotters Gazette or Oomy Goolie Investigations. 

Signing off with the most famed of all inscriptions:

"Under this sod lies another"

Notes:

* I've no idea where the flying backward reference actually comes from, but there was a joke about the Oomagoolie bird, so named as it had very short legs, and every time it landed it squawked........

** 'Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray 1750/1. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard

*** I must have stopped and read this inscription every time we walked through St Mary's churchyard. It's the tombstone of  Thomas Port, 1805-1838. For the full gory details, see the attached:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Harrow_rail_accident

I remember being interested in another stone, I think, round the back of the church with a skull & crossbones or similar, but, at 30-plus years distance, I can't recall, or find, anything else about it. Then there was the occasion when the famous Peachey tomb (see the links below) was nowhere to be found.....like properly actually disappeared. 

https://darkestlondon.com/tag/harrow-on-the-hill/
https://harrowonline.org/2016/09/28/the-story-behind-john-peacheys-tomb/

We carry on the Tombstone Trotting tradition. It was intriguing to find the tomb (a not-so-tasteful 9ft pyramid) for the very-much-still-alive Nicolas Cage, in New Orleans' St Louis No. 1 cemetery, when we visited in 2017.  And the Animals Cemetery in Jersey, where we went summer 2018, has any number of moving epithets.