Today is National Epitaphs Day – at least I think it is – and I must thank those readers who, over the years, have sent me the following, for it means I can knock off early and prepare myself for yet another long weekend.

I have come across no noteworthy epitaphs on South African gravestones, but there appear to be plenty elsewhere.

It is my bounden duty – seeing today is NED – to share them with readers. 

Some, such as the next three, are rather mean-spirited.

On a grave in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies Ezekial Aikle. Age 102. The Good Die Young.

In a London cemetery:

Here lies Ann Mann who lived an old maid but died an old Mann. December 8, 1767.

On the grave of the victim of a road accident in Uniontown, Pennsylvania:

Here lies the body

On a 19th century grave in Silver City, Nevada:

Here lays Butch,

Sir John Strange’s epitaph on his tombstone in England:

Here lies an honest lawyer, and that is Strange.

An anonymous person in Stowe, Vermont:

I was somebody. Who, is no business of yours.

Lester Moore was a Wells Fargo Co station agent for Naco, Arizona, in the Wild West of the 1880s.

He is buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:

In a Georgia cemetery:

I told you I was sick!

John Penny’s epitaph in the cemetery at Wimborne, England:

Reader if cash thou art in want of any – Dig 4 feet deep and thou wilt find a Penny.

Anna Hopewell’s grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont:

Here lies the body of our Anna

Someone in Winslow, Maine, didn’t like Beza Wood:

In Memory of Beza Wood, departed this life November 2, 1837 aged 45 years. Here lies one Wood enclosed in wood.

On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket, Massachusetts:

Under the sod and under the trees

A grave in Girard, Pennsylvania:

Here lies Ellen Shannon who was fatally burned March 21, 1870 by the explosion of a lamp filled with RE Danforth’s Non-Explosive Burning Fluid.

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

Here lies an atheist all dressed up and no place to go.

In Newbury, England (1742):

Tom Smith is dead, and here he lies,

Hillaire Belloc (1870-1953), one of my favourite poets, but an indifferent politician:

Here richly, with ridiculous display,

In a Welland, Ontario cemetery

Here lies all that remains of Charlotte,

A marvellous thing for this vicinity.

Contact Stoep: E-mail: jcl@onwe.co.za; Website: www.jamesclarke.co.za;

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