There was a woman went to bed at the lower village a while
ago, and her child along with her. For a time they did not sleep,
and then something came to the window, and they heard a voice and
this is what it said--
'"It is time to sleep from this out."
'In the morning the child was dead, and indeed it is many get their
death that way on the island.'
The young man has been buried, and his funeral was one of the
strangest scenes I have met with. People could be seen going down to
his house from early in the day, yet when I went there with the old
man about the middle of the afternoon, the coffin was still lying in
front of the door, with the men and women of the family standing
round beating it, and keening over it, in a great crowd of people. A
little later every one knelt down and a last prayer was said. Then
the cousins of the dead man got ready two oars and some pieces of
rope--the men of his own family seemed too broken with grief to know
what they were doing--the coffin was tied up, and the procession
began. The old woman walked close behind the coffin, and I happened
to take a place just after them, among the first of the men. The
rough lane to the graveyard slopes away towards the east, and the
crowd of women going down before me in their red dresses, cloaked
with red pethcoats, with the waistband that is held round the head
just seen from behind, had a strange effect, to which the white
coffin and the unity of colour gave a nearly cloistral quietness.
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