'At three score winters and I died
A cheerless being soul and sad
The nuptial knot I never tied
And wish my father never had'
And there's a good mix of metaphors in this send off found at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire and dated 1740. However, the first word is missing.
'............death of all men is the total sum
The period into which we all must come
He lives but a short life who lives the longest
And is weak in death in life was strongest
Our life is like cobwebs be we never so gay
And Death the broom which sweeps us all away'
A London epitaph for William Wilson goes:
'Here lies the body of W W
Who never more will trouble you, trouble you'
Clearly the story in this next epitaph points out the importance of being quick on the draw. It comes from Lost Creek in Colorado.
'Here lies the clay of Mitchell Coots
Whose feet yet occupy his boots
His soul has gone - we know not where
it landed, neither do we care
He slipped the joker up his sleeve
With vile intention to deceive
And when detected, tried to jerk
His gun, but didn't get his work
in with sufficient swiftness, which
Explains the presence here of Mitch
At Gabriel's trump, if he should wake
He'll mighty likely like to take
The trump with that same joker he
Had sleeved so surreptitiously
And which we placed upon his bier
When we concealed his body here'
I like the epitaph which author, Robert Louis Stephenson, composd for himself.The creator of 'Treasure Island' fame spent his last few years of life in the South Sea islands of Honolulu and Samoa. He wrote several more books in the six years he was there. He wrote his own epitaph before he died at the age of only 44. He chose to be buried on the Samoan mountain of Vaea. His family put there the epitaph Stephenson had written.
'Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will
This be the verse you grave for me
Here he lies where he longed to be
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill'
The two wives of Henry Sexton are buried near Newmarket in Cambridgeshire.
'Here lies the body of Sarah Sexton
She was a wife that never vexed one
I can't say so much for the one at the next stone'
And now, once again, back to Norfolk, that County rich in weird sendoffs. This one is typical of them:
'My grandfather lies buried here
My cousin Jane, and two Uncles dear
My father perished with inflammation in the thighs
And my sister dropped down dead in the Minories
But the reason I'm interred here, according to my thinking
Is owing to my good living and hard drinking
If therefore good christians, you wish to live long
Don't drink too much wine, brandy, gin, or anything strong'
From Northamptonhire we have:
'As you are in health and spirits gay
I was, too, the other day
I thought myself of life as safe
As those that read my epitaph'
And here another amusing play on words from Nottinghamshire:
'John Adams lies here, of the Parish of Southwell
A carrier who carried his can to his mouth well
He carried so much, and he carried so fast
He could carry no more - so was carried at last
For the liquor he drank, being too much for one
He could not carry off - so he's now carri-on'
And to close with this week here's an epitaph to a money lender from Nova Scotia:
'Here lies old Twenty-Five percent
The more he had, the more he lent
The more he had, the more he craved
Great God, can this poor soul be saved?

Next week in Part 17 - Shoemaker's Epitaph