Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1878-09-25
NO. 80.
About the Heart.

The human heart has been considered
by many of the dying in past times as
votive gift peculiarly sacred. And
many instances are on record of the
burial of the heart apart from the place
where the ashes of the body might re-
pose. One of the earliest instances of
this mode of heart burial is that of
Henry III. of England. He died in
passion of grief before the altar of the
church of Chinon in llS9. His heart
was inferred at Fontevrault, but his
body, from the nOstrils of which tradi-
tion alleges blood TO have dropped ON
the approach of his rebellious son Rich
ard, was laid in a separate vault When
Richard Ceur de Lion fell beneath
Gourdan's arrow at the siege of Chalwy,
the gallant heart which, in its greatness
and mercy, inspired him to forgive and
even to reward the luckless archer, was,
after his death preserved in a casket in
the treasury of the cathedral which
William the Conqueror built in ROuen;
for Richard By last will directed that
his body should be inferred in Fontey-
rault. "at the feet of his father, to tes-
tify his sorrow for the uneasiness he
had given him during his lifetime"
He bequeathed his heart to Normandy,
out OF his great love for the people
thereof. In Scotland there have beer
many instances of the separate burial
of the human heart. The earliest
known is that connected with the found
ing and erection of New Abbey by
Derargilla, daughter of Allan, the Gel
tic lord of Galloway, and wife of John
Baliol, father of the competitor for the
Scottish crown. Baliol, to whom she
was deeply attached, died an exile in
France in 1868, but Derargilla had his
heart embalmed, and as the Scotichroni-
con records, ''lokyt and bunden with
sylver brycht," and this she always
carried about with her. In 1888, as
death approached, she directed that
"this silent and daily companion in life
for twenty years should be laid upon
her bosom when she was buried in the
abbey she had founded. During the
repair of Christ's church at Cork Qre-
land) in 1919, a human heart, in lead
en- case, was found imbedded among the
masonry; but to whom it had belonged.
what was its story, the piety or love its
owner wished TO commemorate. no le-
gend or inscription remained to tell.
When the body of the Emperor NapO-
leon was prepared for interment at 81.
Helena, in May, 1921 the heart was re-
moved by a medical officer, to be solder
ed up in case. Nine. Bertrand, in her
grief and enthusiasm, had made some
vow, or expressed a vehement desire, to
obtain possession of this as a precious
relic, and the doctor, fearing that some
trick might be played him, and his COM
mission be thereby imperilled, kept IL
all night in his own room in glass
dish. The noise of broken glass aroused
him from a waking dOze, and he started
forward, only in time to rescue the
heart of the Emperor from a huge
brown rat, which was dragging it across
the floor to its hole. 1t was rescued by
the doctor, soldered up in silver urn,
filled with spirits by Sergeant Abraham
Millington of the ST. Helena artillery,
and placed in a casket. In 1774 Sir
Francis Eastwood received the singu-
lar bequest of human heart, as the
obituaries of that year record, that when
"Paul Whitehead, ESD, a gentleman
much admired by the HteTdti for his
publications, died at his apartments in
Henrietta street, Covent Garden, LondOn
among other whimsical legacies was his
heart, which with ESQ, he bequeathed TO
his lOrdship."