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In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious by W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
page 75 of 137 (54%)
revealed to Europeans as savages, the place of interment was _tapu_,
or holy. The wild and warlike Afghanistans have also a profound
reverence for their burial-grounds, which they speak of expressively
as "cities of the silent." Among the Turks the utmost possible respect
is paid to the resting-places of the dead, and nowhere, perhaps (says
Mrs. Stone in "God's Acre"), are the burial-places so beautiful.
The great and increasing size of Turkish cemeteries is due to the
repugnance of the people to disturbing the soil where once a body has
been laid. The Chinese and the inhabitants of the Sunda Isles
(says the authority just quoted) seem to vie with each other in the
reverence with which they regard the burial-places of their ancestors,
which almost invariably occupy the most beautiful and sequestered
sites. The graves are usually overgrown with long grasses and
luxuriantly flowering plants. In like manner the Moors have a
particular shrub which overspreads their graves, and no one is
permitted to pluck a leaf or a blossom.

The simple Breton people are deeply religious, and their veneration
for the dead is intense. They are frequently to be seen--men, women,
and children--kneeling on the ground in their churchyards, praying
among the graves. It may therefore be well believed that in the period
of burial reform which overspread the Continent in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century there was great opposition in Brittany to the
establishment of remote cemeteries. The thought of burying elsewhere
than in the parish churchyard was to the minds of the parishioners a
species of impiety. When reasoned with they would answer:

"Our fathers were buried here, and you would separate us from our
dead. Let us be buried here, where our kinsfolk can see our graves
from their windows, and the children can come at evening to pray."
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