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A hard soil, necessitating the removal of the body, is not the only difficulty with which the Necrophori are acquainted. Frequently, perhaps more often than not, the ground is covered with grass, above all with couch-grass, whose tenacious rootlets form an inextricable network below the surface.
Incapable of carrying the monstrous corpse, no matter where encountered, he is forced to dig the grave where the body lies. This obligatory place of sepulture may be in stony soil; it may occupy this or that bare spot, or some other where the grass, especially the couch-grass, plunges into the ground its inextricable network of little cords.
But it may confound the rash adopters of the more obvious etymological derivations, to learn that the couch-grass or dog-grass, or, to speak scientifically, the Triticum repens of Linnaeus, does not grow within a quarter of a mile of this castrum or hill-fort, whose ramparts are uniformly clothed with short verdant turf; and that we must seek a bog or palus at a still greater distance, the nearest being that of Gird-the-mear, a full half-mile distant.
But it may confound the rash adopters of the more obvious etymological derivations, to learn that the couch-grass or dog-grass, or, to speak scientifically, the Triticum repens of Linnaeus, does not grow within a quarter of a mile of this castrum or hill-fort, whose ramparts are uniformly clothed with short verdant turf; and that we must seek a bog or palus at a still greater distance, the nearest being that of Gird-the-mear, a full half-mile distant.
At the time when her last child was born I advised her to stay at that pavilion. The atmosphere is wholesome, and children ought to spring up there like couch-grass." Thereupon, with a sonorous laugh, Beauchene began to jest in his habitual way, remarking that if the doctor were correct there would probably be no end to Mathieu's progeny, numerous as it already was.
His work having brought him at last just enough to enable him to give himself the pleasure of becoming, in his turn, a proprietor, he had acquired, for a modest sum, this dilapidated dwelling and this deserted spot of ground; barren land, given over to couch-grass, thistles, and brambles; a sort of "accursed spot, to which no one would have confided even a pinch of turnip-seed."
So we packed it out bag by bag, and made an ironbark coffin for it, and buried it away there, and put some couch-grass turfs on it. We knew they'd soon grow up, and nobody could tell that it hadn't always been covered up the same as the rest of the old garden.
I borrow from the kitchen-range an iron trivet whose legs will supply a solid foundation for the engine which I am devising. This is a coarse network made of strips of raffia, a fairly accurate imitation of that of the couch-grass. The very irregular meshes are nowhere wide enough to admit of the passage of the creature to be buried, which this time is a Mole.
"Quickens-bog may at first seem to derive its name from the plant Quicken, by which, Scottice, we understand couch-grass, dog-grass, or the Triticum repens of Linnaeus, and the common English monosyllable Bog, by which we mean, in popular language, a marsh or morass in Latin, Palus.
The first, a remnant of the dispersed community, sold mallows and couch-grass, the only specifics he had; the second was the person in whose keeping were the keys of the monastery; and the third was a kind of housekeeper who, for the love of God and out of neighbourly friendship, offered her help to new-comers, and, if it was accepted, did not fail to levy heavy contributions.
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