Returning to our proper subject, we find a curious superstition which merits detailed examination, namely the general antipathy of country folk to burial on the North side of the churchyard. This strange aversion must have come within the experience of most antiquaries and folk-lorists. During the peregrinations of many years, the writer has collected a large number of instances illustrative of the belief, and a few of these will be submitted.
So recently as the year 1904 there was buried, in a quiet Surrey churchyard, the body of a well-known public man who had poisoned himself shortly after receiving a sentence of penal servitude. The newspapers duly recorded that the interment took place on the North side of the churchyard, and that a specially adapted service was read, but no one seemed to notice the significance of these details. An explanation, as we shall see, is nevertheless discoverable. A few years earlier, in 1899, during the discussion of a Burials Bill, then before the House of Commons, it was alleged that in most village churchyards there remained burial accommodation sufficient for some time to come. Against this plea, it was urged that the space still available was usually situated on the North side of the graveyard, and that there was a rooted objection among villagers to burial in that quarter. The Home Secretary replied that he had never heard of the prejudice, and a somewhat general incredulity as to its existence was revealed among the Commoners. Thereupon a correspondent, writing to _Notes and Queries_, clinched the argument based on superstition by quoting the inscription on a tombstone in the graveyard of Epworth, the village of the Wesleys. The epitaph ran thus:
“That I might longer undisturb’d abide, I choos’d to be laid on this Northern side[877].”
Such a wish was no new, crazy fancy, for earlier instances are on record. From an account published in 1657, we learn that Benjamin Rhodes, steward to Thomas, Earl of Elgin, requested to be buried on the North side of Malden churchyard (Bedford), “to crosse the received superstition[878].” Combining the last two incidents, we may infer that the Northern portion of the churchyard was little used, and that neglect was due to its ill-repute. So, then, in the remark made by Edmund Burke, “I would rather sleep in the Southern corner of a country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets[879],” the indication of the Southern position is not mere rhetoric. Let us proceed to examine some further instances, in order to show that our generalization is sound.