> >In a message dated 1/22/2006 6:03:14 AM GMT Standard Time, norcal@telus.net >writes: > >www3.telus.net/artnorma/johnston > > >I think that women came to the house of the dead person to pay their >respects, but it would only be men who followed the coffin to the >church or the >graveyard and they would return to the house where the women had >prepared a meal. > >I attended a funeral in Bowmore in Islay in the early 1970s and went to the >service in the Round Church, but it was only men who went to the graveside >in the churchyard. > >Elizabeth McAuslan > > >==== SCT-ISLAY Mailing List ==== >To visit the website associated with this project, visit: >http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~steve/islay/data.htm I was just leaving Kilnaughton Cemetery in November 1999 (six years ago) when a hearse followed by a bus stopped outside the cemetery and only men emerged from the bus. The custom may derive from the days when the coffin was carried, sometimes for long distances, to the nearest cemetery. The men followed the coffin and after a certain distance it was passed to the next bearers in line while the previous bearers passed to the back of the line and so on.I understand that this happened in Islay before the cemetery at the Round Church in Bowmore was created . Some of my ancestors, who lived just outside present Bowmore, were buried at Kilnaughton which is some miles away. Finlay Payne --