s of distant ages, showing how varied and extensive his knowledge
was, and his skill in applying it whenever occasion required.

The winding or shrouding sheet, in which the body was wrapped previous
to its burial, is alluded to in "Hamlet" (v. 1), in the song of the
clown:

"A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding sheet:
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet."

Again, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. 1), Puck says:

"the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud."

Ophelia speaks of the shroud as white as the mountain snow ("Hamlet,"
iv. 5). The following song, too, in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 4), mentions
the custom of sticking yew in the shroud:

"Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath:
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it!"

To quote two further illustrations. Desdemona ("Othello," iv. 2) says to
Emilia: "Lay on my bed my wedding-sheets," and when in the following
scene Emilia answers:

"I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed,"

Desdemona adds:

"If I do die before thee, pr'thee, shroud me
In one of those same sheets"

--a wish, indeed, which her cruel fate so speedily caused to be realized.
And in "3 Henry VI." (i. 1) we have King Henry's powerful words:

"Think'st thou, that I will leave my kingly throne,
Wherein my grandsire and my father sat?
No: first shall war unpeople this my realm;
Ay, and their colours,--often borne in France,
And now in England, to our heart's great sorrow,--
Shall be my winding-sheet."

The custom, still prevalent, of carrying the dead to the grave with
music--a practice which existed in the primitive church--to denote that
they have ended their spiritual warfare, and are become conquerors,
formerly existed very generally in this country.[747] In "Cymbeline"
(iv. 2), Arviragus says:

"And let us, Polydore, though now our voices
Have got the mannish crack, sing him to the ground,
As once our mother; use like note and words,
Save that Euriphile must be Fidele."

[747] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol ii. pp. 267-270.

The tolling of bells at funerals is referred to in "Hamlet" (v.