Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1870-06-08
STREWING GRAVES WITH FLOW
ERS.
Origin Of the Custom.

| Extract from the Grafton OF Gen. Isaac K. Sher.
wood, delivered at Bellsfontaine, May 30, 1870
Irving tells US in his Sketch Book
! that the custom of decorating the
graves of those we love with flowers
'originated long before art had tasked
| itself to modulate sorrow into song or
story it on a monument" 1t is in
timated in high quarters that the GUS
tom originated with the ancient
Greeks. Homer, amid the tears OF
his Iliad, strews forget-me-nots on the
tombs of his heroes :-Lycurgus pro-
claimed that soldiers who lost their
lives in battle should be buried with
green bOughs above their heads. The
Thessalonians adorned the tomb of
Achilles with lilies and jessamine-
and the Roman matrons threw flow
ers upon the funeral pile of Julius
Caesar. But it was both in Greece
and Rome, a rite in the nature of q
sacrifice to appease the Gods. Neith-
er the ancient Greeks or Romans had
any knowledge of Botany nor any
language for flowers. Neither is it
true that the custom of floral sacrifices
originated with the Greeks. 1t was
the custom in China five hundred
years before Socrates, and in Egypt
before Homer wrote his Iliad. 1t is
true that the olive, the ivy and the
laurel leaf were emblems of their
vague ideas of Immortality. But the
water lily or lotus blossom was the
sacred flower of Egypt a thousand
years before. Herodotus, the eldest
of the Greek historians, whom Cicero
calls the father of history, says that
the Egyptians were the first of man
kind who asserted that the soul of
man is immortal. He declares that
the great pyramids of Egypt were
built for sepulchres, and it was the
custom in Egypt for families accom-
panied by priests to visit the tombs of
relatives and offer prayer and obla-
tions at least five hundred years be-
fore Homer, and he wrote a thousand
wears before Christ. Their oblations,
like those of the Greeks and the Ro-
mans, were to the Gods, and consisted
of oil, wine, olives, turtle doves, Jew
els and flowers, The Egyptian God
dess, Anouke, was the guardian of
purity and household ties. She is
represented with a lotus blossom in
one hand and the emblem of life in
the other. This would indicate a
better conception of flowers than eth
er the Greeks or the Romans. The
lotus perpetually occurs in Oriental
Mothology. 1t was elevated in the
Pantheons of the Egyptians, as the
emblem of the great life-giving prin-
ciple. Laschsmi, the Goddess of
Abundance, corresponding with the
Venus Aphrodite of the Greeks was
called the lotus-born as having ascend
ed from the ocean in this flower The
regarded this life as tenn
porary incident; therefore, their |
dwellings expressed vicissitude, but |
their tOmbs were symbolic of the i'm
of calm repOse, The lotus |
was typical of the intermingling of
the eternal principles Of beauty, love
and the creative power
The custom of floral offerings doubt |
less originated with the Egyptians,
but whether it was transmitted to us |
the Greeks and Romans is a
question of much doubt. Burning the
dead was common among the Greeks
from the earliest period of authentic
history, and the custom was intro
iuced into Rome rs years before the
Christian Era. Schylia was the first
Roman of note whose body was burn
I'd. Flora, the Roman Goddess of
Flowers, was a sensuOus goddess, and
ler anniversary on the Sd week in
April, was celebrated at the Roman
Capitol with Bachanalian revelry.-
Il was the most sensuOus festival of
he Gods, and during the COnsulship
# the austere Cato, it was abolished
" his edict as degrading to the Ro-
nan people, and was never afterward
evived. 1t is clear, therefore, that
With this conception of flowers, there
ould have been no floral decorations
n honor of the dead in the spirit of
Ievotion, reverence or prayer. The
ustom we this day commemorate of
loral offerings from the hands of our
air women, to our dead soldiery,
doubtless had its origin in the middle
ges-in the ages of chivalry; and 1t is :
Iow conceded that chivalry did not
riginate in Rome. From such a
mass of corruption, as was ;
the Eternal City" before her fall, no !
Ugh toned chivalric feeling could ;;
ave emenated.
In Mills's History of Chivalry its
ate of origin is fixed at $50 Of the
'hristian era, but its principles were |
ot approved by ecclesiastical power
ntil 1895, at the Council at Clermont.
{ was here the holy crusades were
rst approved. Then followed the
ing fierce wars in which the Occi-
ent and the Orient met to break lam .
IS for the supremacy of the world, = i
chivalry against Oriental c
aganism-Christ against Mohammed. \
here were then three incentives to
ar, religious zeal, personal ambition 9
nd woman's love. Here for the first b
me in the history of mankind war d
,ceived some touches of tenderness b
nd mercy, and a code of honor was a
tablished, which is now universally "
among all civilized na- a
ons, christian or pagan. 1t was in b
lis age that woman rose from vas f
/ and q slave to her equal place with d
an, and her virtue became as sacred is
a prayer. IT is in this age also b,
at the record first appears Of 100 oi
en- StrebCing FO1OerS upon the 9rdue
q soldier and the ceremony then,
to-day, was in the spirit of affection, h,
.votion and veneration. Many of b
g songs of the troubadours were cl
ritten by women. If ehivalry had CT
en- borrowed from Rome these songs tl
0uld have been enriched from the &C