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Dancing On Graves

The Greeks had Funeral Dances and indeed Funeral Games but they were essentially elegant and respectful tributes to the deceased. Then there was the Medieval notion of a Dance of the Dead but that was a memento mori, seeing the living and the dead as bound by their common mortality*.

Dancing on someone's grave as an insult seems to be an impromptu act, a kind of desecration. I can't immediately think of many classic cases from literature, though there probably are a few - the Munchkins come close, and there must be other dramatic celebrations of defeated demonic figures. It is mainly in the context of the famous old joke, referred to above that the idea continues to circulate and maybe appeal.

*Goethe's 19th Century version is comic-grotesque as is the tone poem by Saint-Saëns - originally a song to words by one Cazalis. But both retain the traditional theme that rich and poor, young and old must dance to Death's tune:

http://www.poetry-archive.com/g/the_dan ... _dead.html
 
beakboo said:
Never mind dancing on graves though, I'll never forget the state of Jim Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise, and more importantly, the graves surrounding it. :(
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I heard that Oscar Wilde's grave was affected by graffiti from the pens of Smiths fans... :roll:
 
beakboo said:
Never mind dancing on graves though, I'll never forget the state of Jim Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise, and more importantly, the graves surrounding it. :(
.
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Really? I have pictures of it somewhere from April 1994 and it was fine then. People had scribbled out the directions to it though
Tis here

and another random one from the same graveyard I just had to post
 
I have read that lipstick is a problem when women kiss marble gravestones and leave a mark. Is Wilde's grave marked like this? I seem to remember the family being most annoyed at the mess.
 
I think Valentino's grave was peppered with lipstick after his death (no idea if that's still a problem).
 
Reading this thread has reminded me of the time when my dad returned from a friends funeral. He was upset by the sight of a male ballet dancer flitting about the graves. He could describe him in great detail and was mainly upset that the mans tights had split, it seemed that this detail upset my dads sense of decorum :shock:
All this left a deep impression on me at the time (I was going to ballet class three times a week) The church the funeral was at was quite isolated in the countryside and thinking about it, it is rather odd that anyone dressed as a male dancer would be seen dancing in such a rural place :?
 
I want to ask, 'Did anyone else see the dancer?' but you might think I'm slighting your father, which I would never do.


So I'll let Frobush ask instead. ;)
 
My Auntie who was also at the funeral later confimed that there was indeed a male ballet dancer dancing about the graveyard at the time of the funeral. She had askedquestions about him and was told that he was nothing to do with the funeral and had not known the deceased.
There was a lot of talk afterwards in the village :shock: It seems that the canon knew who the dancer was but was keeping quiet.
I don't like funerals but this is one I wish I had attended!
 
escargot1 said:
So I'll let Frobush ask instead. ;)
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Oh eye! I thought my ears were burning! :evil:

I'll have you know that I tend to tread very carefully when funerals are the subject of a conversation. Very carefully indeed. A bit like a ballet dancer. Or is that a belly dancer?

Anyway, Ken Dodd's dad's dog died.

Did he?

No - Doddy!
 
escargot1 said:
Bindun - thank you, b3ta! :D

graveiu4.gif


.....Aha, BRF, I've heard of pissing on graves too. Must be an even more disrespectful practice. :lol: .......
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From "The Merry Muses of Caledonia" attributed to Robert Burns:-

Epitaph for Hugh Logan, Esq., of Laight.

Here lyes Squire Hugh-ye harlot crew,
Come mak' your water on him,
I'm sure that he weel pleas'd would be
To think ye pish'd upon him.
 
Daftbugger1 said:
beakboo said:
Never mind dancing on graves though, I'll never forget the state of Jim Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise, and more importantly, the graves surrounding it. :(
.
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Really? I have pictures of it somewhere from April 1994 and it was fine then. People had scribbled out the directions to it though
Tis here

and another random one from the same graveyard I just had to post
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Here's one I took in the mid 1980's. Sorry it's so fuzzy, but my scanner doesn't work and I had to take a digital picture of it.
2007_0119foxeating0005.jpg

Somewhere in my possession I have a photo of a crematory (?) plate for a man called Leopold Fucker. Can I find it? Can I buggery. :roll:
 
beakboo said:
Somewhere in my possession I have a photo of a crematory (?) plate for a man called Leopold Fucker. Can I find it? Can I buggery. :roll:
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Here it is :D



(click to enlarge)
 
I remember my younger brother dancing and playing on my Grandmother's grave when he was around two or three years old.

I attempted to make him stop.

My Dad said to me rather coldly: "Do you think for one minute that my Mother minds?"

oooh - put in my place
 
Has the bust of Morrison been removed from his grave? I thought I heard that it was being taken away for cleaning but was not replaced.
 
What was the name of the 17th Century Edinburgh bigwig whose "cursed" grave was vandalized by teenagers two or three years back?

I don't think I'd care to dance on his grave.
 
Thank you very much, dear Quixote.

I thought the name was in permanent memory but if so it remained deviously well-hidden.

But I note from the news source you cite that the teenaged pair comprised "the first people in more than 100 years to be found guilty of violating a grave and corpse."

Does this mean that such grave desecrations are almost unheard of in Scotland or that the miscreants are very rarely apprehended and successfully prosecuted?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Does this mean that such grave desecrations are almost unheard of in Scotland or that the miscreants are very rarely apprehended and successfully prosecuted?
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I should think it's the latter. Grave desecrations or vandalism do occur on a regular basis over here in the UK. It seems to me that every month or so (either locally or nationally) there's a news report, whether it is teddies or ornaments being stolen from a child's grave to gravestones being pushed over, smashed or daubed with grafitti.

The double doozy of not only breaking into the tomb but also the removal of body parts is probably a very rare instance. However, we did have the Gladys Hammond case happen recently in the UK, although this was in England rather than Scotland and in quite different circumstances.
 
TheQuixote said:
However, we did have the Gladys Hammond case happen recently in the UK, although this was in England rather than Scotland and in quite different circumstances.
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Yes, I followed this one at the time.

It wasn't the animal rights movement's finest hour.
 
Life on Mars II: Buffy Redux

OldTimeRadio said:
...

Does this mean that such grave desecrations are almost unheard of in Scotland or that the miscreants are very rarely apprehended and successfully prosecuted?
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Coastal town, South West Scotland, sometime 1972-ish, Late one night, I was out on the razzle with a bunch of mates, from one of the bad estates. We were all around 12ish. Anyway, we wandered out of our usual territory into the borders of an even worse estate, where there was an old walled graveyard, right on the edge of the main road.

There was a group of kids, boys and girls, from estate b., in the churchyard and they were enacting a strange adolescent ritual. When they saw us they stopped and started on us as outsiders. Luckily, one of the really cool guys, from our class at the comprehensive school, was a leading member of the gang and gave us the okay.

So, what was the ritual?

It was called, something like, 'The Belinda'. The story was that the ghost of a young girl haunted the graveyard. She had been called Belinda and it was possible to call her up. One of the kids, a boy, stood behind one of the girls, who closed her eyes. The boy slowly and gently massaged her temples with his forefingers, in a clockwise direction, whilst quietly repeating the name, "Belinda", over and over again, until the girl apparently fell into a trance and then chased everybody, whilst possessed by the ghost!

Weird, scary fun, when you're 12. I've no idea of its provenance, only that it was definitely the sort of game young boys and girls might play on the borders between childhood and adolescence.
 
The boy slowly and gently massaged her temples with his forefingers, in a clockwise direction, whilst quietly repeating the name, "Belinda", over and over again, until the girl apparently fell into a trance and then chased everybody, whilst possessed by the ghost!
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we had a sort of varient of that involving the temple massaging and 'trance' at my school in leeds, cira 1980... only in this version, an hypnotic poem was spoken by the temple massager about dying in a car crash, followed by the words 'on the count of 3, your body will become as light as a feather'... and then several other participants supposedly could lift them easily using only two fingers...

...there was also a nastier version of it, where the last line was replaced with 'on the count of three, you will experience a sudden pain', at which point the (usually male) victim, who has their eyes closed for the trance, was surrupticiously punched in the knackers...
 
and now you have to pay mistress sadie £50 an hour for the same treatment... isn't life cruel :twisted:
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
and now you have to pay mistress sadie £50 an hour for the same treatment... isn't life cruel :twisted:
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Well, thanks to the damage caused by you and your 'mates', I only have to pay half price!
 
rynner said:
personally, i am just waiting for the demise if one tony blair, the most evil politician this country has produced in my lifetime... :twisted:
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Second, Ryn, second. Thatch is still the most evil. The Bleurgh is only Norman Bates to her mother. ;)
 
I've heard of people spreading picnic lunches on family graves.
 
Re: Life on Mars II: Buffy Redux

Pietro_Mercurios said:
Weird, scary fun, when you're 12. I've no idea of its provenance, only that it was definitely the sort of game young boys and girls might play on the borders between childhood and adolescence.
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When I was a kid, one of my favourite haunts was the graveyard - we used to hang out there and drink vodka. :oops:
 
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