Earlier today on my travels I chanced across a headstone with a very strange inscription. I am assuming that the bottom half is a translation of the top half but I cannot figure out the language.
A learned friend of mine is leaning towards a pidgin Greek but I am having difficulty seeing that. I was wondering if this is some obscure cuneiform which is made up of various scripts and languages.
I have had to link to the pictures because I needed to keep them very large for clarity.
The headstone in question is to be found in Whitton North Lincolnshire.
I'm stumped. The date being 1791, I wonder if it's some kind of guild or sodality code, if something like that existed. It doesn't look like anything I've seen before.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
Those are gorgeous letterforms, at any rate. The sexton clearly had a good eye. Were there any other stones around the same date with the same look to the letters, even if in English?
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
Wow. Good eye. I wonder if the fancy script was ready-made on the
stone, with space left for the decedant's name and dates, since that
is a different script.
Or, with a Lincolnshire Accent,
Life be short,
Eternity be long!
Memento Mori (Remember Death)!
You take good stock of that now, mind!
Brilliant, IB. Well done. You've saved me, and I'm sure others, a helluvan eyestrain.
* applauds *
...would anyone care to speculate on the rationale for making a headstone inscription so difficult to read? I find it quite puzzling. I suppose the mingling of Latin and local dialect, as well as the challenging lettering, reflects an interesting...sense of humor?
scottielvr wrote:
...would anyone care to speculate on the rationale for making a headstone inscription so difficult to read?
Because no matter how big an ass you were while you were alive, you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will eventually take notice and say "What an interesting headstone!"
That is really helpful. This is so interesting but I was getting nowhere on learning some more about it. I never would have believed it was English . Good thing we have an innocent bystander!
Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium. ~ Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence.----Seneca
Tell us something.: A long time chatty Chiffer but have been absent for almost two decades. Returned in 2022 and still recognize some names! I also play anglo concertina now.
. Good thing we have an innocent bystander!
