1),
where the priest says of Ophelia:

"she is allow'd her virgin crants,
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial."

It has been a current opinion for centuries that places of burial are
haunted with spectres and apparitions--a notion, indeed, that prevailed
as far back as the times of heathenism. Ovid speaks of ghosts coming out
of their sepulchres and wandering about: and Vergil, quoting the popular
opinion of his time, tells us how Moeris could call the ghosts out of
their sepulchres ("Bucol." viii. 98):

"Moerim, saepe animas imis excire sepulchris,
Atque satas alio vidi traducere messis."

Indeed, the idea of the ghost remaining near the corpse is of world-wide
prevalence; and as Mr. Tylor[748] points out, "through all the changes
of religious thought from first to last, in the course of human history,
the hovering ghosts of the dead make the midnight burial-ground a place
where men's flesh creeps with terror." In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
(v. 1), Puck declares:

"Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide."

[748] "Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 30.

In the same play, too (iii. 2), Puck, speaking of "Aurora's harbinger,"
says:

"At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon."

In this passage two curious superstitions are described; the ghosts of
self-murderers, who are buried in cross-roads, and of those who have
been drowned at sea, being said to wander for a hundred years, owing to
the rites of sepulture having never been properly bestowed on their
bodies.

We may further compare Hamlet's words (iii. 2):

"'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world."

From the earliest period much importance has been attached to the
position of the grave, the popular direction being from east to west,
that from north to south being regarded as not only dishonorable, but
unlucky. Thus, in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2), Guiderius, when arranging about
the apparently dead body of Imogen, disguised in man's apparel, says:

"Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the