Queen of the May
Jun. 10th, 2025 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustSunday was (would have been) Frances's birthday; ten days ago was her funeral. Her (three, adult) children had found a note, handwritten in pencil, listing a number of small bequests, and saying that she wanted a full requiem mass followed by a celebratory wake: so that's what we did.
It was a good funeral: it met that essential test, that the celebrant had known the deceased, so that Frances's personality shone through the entire ceremony, the parts conducted by the church which had been such an important part of her life, as well as the contributions of her friends and family. Good, too, in that so many of those friends and family managed to be there.
I don't think I'd ever been to a Catholic funeral before, and was ready for all sorts of unfamiliar ritual. In fact, there was much that was very familiar: a niece read the 23rd Psalm, rather unsteadily; a graddaughter read from Proverbs:
Not the translation I know, which my father was fond of quoting, the price of a good woman is above rubies... (my mother's name, which she rarely used, was Ruby), but the change from the familiar words making it easier to hear this portrait of an entirely domestic paragon, and see it as at least a partial portrait of our friend.
But I wasn't ready to find myself not recognising the hymns. I learned afterwards that they had been chosen from those Frances's children had sung at school: does that explain why two of them were entirely Marian? Yes, I know this is a thing, but I've never met it in action before. The one which provided the title of this post has the refrain:
This is something I wouldn't have been surprised to encounter among the Victorian parlour ballads which make their way into folk clubs. Contrariwise, I was surprised that the final hymn of the service was one - at last - one I knew: Sydney Carter's Lord of the Dance. I shouldn't have been: I think of Carter as a writer of (often political) folk songs, The Crow on the Cradle and Sing John Ball, but his Guardian obituary opens with the popularity of his songs with school assemblies. Afterwards I asked the left-winger of the family whether this was his choice, but he was completely unaware of this connection: Lord of the Dance had been his mother's choice. Another sign of a good funeral, that you learn something new about the deceased.
Later at the wake I learned something else. There was all the pleasure of a reunion of old friends, who had known Frances since our university days when several of us baby-sat for her. The introduction was made by someone who came from the same village as Frances's mother-in-law, and I assumed they had met there, but no: she explained that she had run into her neighbour in Marks & Spencer's in Durham, and had both exclaimed in surprise "What are you doing here?" The same day, Frances had phoned to invite her to dinner. Well, of course she did.
It was a good funeral: it met that essential test, that the celebrant had known the deceased, so that Frances's personality shone through the entire ceremony, the parts conducted by the church which had been such an important part of her life, as well as the contributions of her friends and family. Good, too, in that so many of those friends and family managed to be there.
I don't think I'd ever been to a Catholic funeral before, and was ready for all sorts of unfamiliar ritual. In fact, there was much that was very familiar: a niece read the 23rd Psalm, rather unsteadily; a graddaughter read from Proverbs:
Who can find a woman of noble character?
She is worth far more than jewels...
Not the translation I know, which my father was fond of quoting, the price of a good woman is above rubies... (my mother's name, which she rarely used, was Ruby), but the change from the familiar words making it easier to hear this portrait of an entirely domestic paragon, and see it as at least a partial portrait of our friend.
But I wasn't ready to find myself not recognising the hymns. I learned afterwards that they had been chosen from those Frances's children had sung at school: does that explain why two of them were entirely Marian? Yes, I know this is a thing, but I've never met it in action before. The one which provided the title of this post has the refrain:
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May,
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.
This is something I wouldn't have been surprised to encounter among the Victorian parlour ballads which make their way into folk clubs. Contrariwise, I was surprised that the final hymn of the service was one - at last - one I knew: Sydney Carter's Lord of the Dance. I shouldn't have been: I think of Carter as a writer of (often political) folk songs, The Crow on the Cradle and Sing John Ball, but his Guardian obituary opens with the popularity of his songs with school assemblies. Afterwards I asked the left-winger of the family whether this was his choice, but he was completely unaware of this connection: Lord of the Dance had been his mother's choice. Another sign of a good funeral, that you learn something new about the deceased.
Later at the wake I learned something else. There was all the pleasure of a reunion of old friends, who had known Frances since our university days when several of us baby-sat for her. The introduction was made by someone who came from the same village as Frances's mother-in-law, and I assumed they had met there, but no: she explained that she had run into her neighbour in Marks & Spencer's in Durham, and had both exclaimed in surprise "What are you doing here?" The same day, Frances had phoned to invite her to dinner. Well, of course she did.
