And Then There Was the Word: A column about our language: Here Lies My First Column for 2010
Sidney Berger, Ph.D.
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Features
A vast literature exists on epitaphs, those usually sobering statements one finds on tombstones. I said usually sobering, but not always. Death is one of those sort of taboo subjects that people are rather spooky about. We don't like to talk about it, especially of our own deaths, so we either avoid it or make jokes about it. Scads of jokes exist about people who have died.
A man knocks on the Pearly Gates and St. Peter calls out: "Who is it?" The man answers, "It is I." St. Peter yells back, "Go to Hell; we have enough English majors here."
People don't like to face death, so when the topic comes up, in any forum, they may make light of it when they can. This has led to a popular genre, in the real world and in the world of creative fiction: epitaphs.
Now, most epitaphs are real, stating on the stone the name and birth and death dates of the departed. Also, there are many real ones with poems giving the same data and also information about the circumstances of the person's death. In fact, there are whole books of these, and it is difficult to distinguish ones that are real from fake ones.
To give the epitaphs a sense of authority, the compilers of these will give a source: "Found in a cemetery in Yuma, Arizona." Who is going there to verify the authenticity of this attribution? Not I.
I have heard bunches of these, usually in doggerel verse, and I cannot vouch for their authenticity. For instance,
Here lies Ebeneezer Jones
Who all his life
collected bones,
Till Death, that grim
and bony spectre,
That all-consuming
bone collector,
Boned old Jones so
neat and tidy,
That here he lies,
all bona fide.
Someone told me that one decades ago and it has stuck in my head all these years.
The standard verse epitaph is sometimes called a "hic jacet" (pronounced "heek yakit"), from the two Latin words which mean ìhere lies." And most of these hic jacets begin with the words "Here lies."
A man knocks on the Pearly Gates and St. Peter calls out: "Who is it?" The man answers, "It is I." St. Peter yells back, "Go to Hell; we have enough English majors here."
People don't like to face death, so when the topic comes up, in any forum, they may make light of it when they can. This has led to a popular genre, in the real world and in the world of creative fiction: epitaphs.
Now, most epitaphs are real, stating on the stone the name and birth and death dates of the departed. Also, there are many real ones with poems giving the same data and also information about the circumstances of the person's death. In fact, there are whole books of these, and it is difficult to distinguish ones that are real from fake ones.
To give the epitaphs a sense of authority, the compilers of these will give a source: "Found in a cemetery in Yuma, Arizona." Who is going there to verify the authenticity of this attribution? Not I.
I have heard bunches of these, usually in doggerel verse, and I cannot vouch for their authenticity. For instance,
Here lies Ebeneezer Jones
Who all his life
collected bones,
Till Death, that grim
and bony spectre,
That all-consuming
bone collector,
Boned old Jones so
neat and tidy,
That here he lies,
all bona fide.
Someone told me that one decades ago and it has stuck in my head all these years.
The standard verse epitaph is sometimes called a "hic jacet" (pronounced "heek yakit"), from the two Latin words which mean ìhere lies." And most of these hic jacets begin with the words "Here lies."
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