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The following nalive account, which was given to me in the earliest stage of this
research project bears out the significance of this gesture as a heanfelt farewell, besides
making "vanish the vision of him lying there from your mind," i.e. preserve the living from
dreams and haunts: 1
PP: Persons here they can't look at a dead person. If they do, they'll see
that person before their eyes for anOlher six months. It's their nerves
but the way to get rid of that is what they call "taking leave of that
person," just touch them, you just trace out with your fingers and its
works. If they do that, they won't have any visions of that person,
wipe it away from their memory. My farner could never go into a
wake, and if he had [0 see the dead person:"well, now, )'11 be looking
at that person for another six months." It was the last farewell sort of
thing.2
Another custom was the Obligation to give away the deceased's clothes 10 non-relatives,
whereby affective separation was signified, without taking anything from the traditional
interaction between the living and the dead;3
People in the olden days had a custom ofgiving clothes of the deceased to
someone who was to wear these clothes for three days in public and each
lime say a prayer for the repose of the soul of the person who had own
these clothes. In one case, a man was given a good suit but a poor pair of
shoes to wear. He went back to the widow and told her he had seen her
husband who had been complaining of his poor feet. So she sent to St.
10hn's for a good pair of shoes to give to this man to wear for her
husband. 4
Buried on top of the coffin would be the rope handles, wreaths and white ribbons, and
sometimes other accessories in clear suggestion of earthly separation:
If the deceased belonged to the "Society of United Fishemlcn" his apron
and collar were put on him in the casket. The hymn of lhe Society was
sung and, as men stood around the grave, a gaff, the symbol of the
brotherhood, was passed from member to member until it got to a chosen
man at the head of the grave. He usually was of high office and he had to
break the gaff over his knee and throw it into the grave with the casket.
If the deceased was a woman-member of the Association of Church of
England women, there was some similar ritual and hymn. Each. woman of
I MUNFLA ms 80-127, p. 87; MUNFLA ms 72·127, p. 5; Elizabeth Mullaley, "Deaths, Wakes
and Burials at Big and Little Paradise, Placentia Bay" uncatalogucd paper from Dr.
Nemec's personal archive, MUN.
2 MUNFLA 87-006/C9695.
3MUNFLA FSC 65·1/52.
4MUNFLA ms 79-328. p.14: the same belief held that if his clothes were not given away or if
the person to whom they were given did not wear them, the deceased would be naked in the
otherworld.