Preparing for tomorrow's shenanigans
Tomorrow is Hallows' Eve, or Halloween, a celebration observed on the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including the saints (hallows), the martyrs, and all the faithful departed.
Just the day to visit a graveyard! Early this morning I found myself in the ancient graveyard at Udny green, in the company of the Grim Reaper!
The building that you can see in the background is a mort-house, an exceedingly solidly built, windowless vault, with massive walls and heavy wooden and metal doors, built to protect the dead from the 19th Century bodysnatchers and anatomists.
Mort-houses are to be found mainly in the North-East of Scotland, stretching from Crail in the South to Marnock in the North. (The Irish built similar structures but referred to them as corpse-houses). Bodies were stored on shelves in the mort-house until too decomposed to be of interest to the anatomists and were then retrieved and buried in the usual way.
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