Note 200 — Chapter XI · FAMILY GRAVEYARDS

In ancient Egypt the cemeteries were overshadowed by thick sycamores; and probably in nearly every country the planting of trees and shrubs (or flowering plants) on the graves of the dead is or has been a common practice. There is no necessity to ascribe the custom to a single origin. The mere desire to differentiate the grave from the surrounding tract of land is sufficient to explain the planting of a tree or a grove of trees on or near the funeral mound. The cypress, as every one knows, was and is a funereal tree in Europe as well as in China. That this was so in Roman times we know from classical literature. For some remarks on the cypress in connection with European folk-lore, see the Folk-lore Journal, vol. iii. (1885) p. 144. See also Sir Thomas Browne's Urn-Burial, ch. iv. para. 3, where it is remarked "that, in strewing their tombs, the Romans affected the rose; the Greeks, amaranthus and myrtle: that the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew and trees perpetually verdant." He adds that these flowers and trees were intended to be silent expressions of the hopes of the survivors; and that "Christians, who deck their coffins with bays, have found a more elegant emblem; for that tree, seeming dead, will restore itself from the root, and its dry and exsuccous leaves resume their verdure again; which, if we mistake not, we have also observed in furze. Whether the planting of yew in churchyards hold not its original from ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit conjecture."