If, when the funeral left the house, the company should go in a
scattered, straggling manner, this was an omen that before long another
funeral would leave the same house. If the company walked away quickly,
it was also a bad omen. It was believed that the spirit of the last
person buried in any graveyard had to keep watch lest any suicide or
unbaptized child should be buried in the consecrated ground, so that,
when two burials took place on the same day, there was a striving to be
first at the churchyard. In some parts of the Highlands this
superstition led to many unseemly scenes when funerals occurred on the
same day.
Those attending the funeral who were not near neighbours or relations
were given a quantity of bread and cakes to take home with them, but
relations and near neighbours returned to the house, where their wives
were collected, and were liberally treated to both meat and drink. This
was termed the _dredgy_ or _dirgy_, and to be present at this was
considered a mark of respect to the departed. This custom may be the
remnant of an ancient practice--in some sort a superstition--which
existed in Greece, where the friends of the deceased, after the funeral,
held a banquet, the fragments of which were afterwards carried to the
tomb.
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