Kate Berridge: Vigor mortis

By ALAN PAPPRILL

I was in Britain when Princess Diana died, plunging the British Isles into a frenzy of public mourning unseen since the death of Queen Victoria.

To Kate Berridge, this was the public outing of death, a final dissecting of the woman whose life was, as Marlene Dietrich famously complained about herself, photographed to death.

In Diana's death, argues Berridge, late 20th-century society could return to the celebration of death in the manner it had discarded 80 years ago, with the mass slaughter and unmarked graves of the First World War.

Vigor Mortis demystifies death, mourning and the processes of burial our society has retreated from over the years.

Berridge records the changing landscape of death, including observations from the the funeral of Prince Albert in 1861 and descriptions of death provided for children in The Child's Companion (1833) and Hymns for Little Children (1848).

As a counterpoint to such advice, Berridge records the celebrations of death preserved in customs and traditions such as "hot cockles", a bawdy game played around the corpse in Yorkshire, the Welsh "trouncing the trippets" or stepping up and down on benches while carrying the corpse, and the use of a sin-eater - a person paid to eat food placed over the body to provide the departed with redemption and an undisturbed afterlife.

Such activities, she argues, support the advent of karaoke funerals such as that of Diana's step-grandmother Barbara Cartland, where the mourners were expected to join with Perry Como in singing ,"I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows" while the writer's body was lowered into the grave.

Her research and fascination with death and its rituals even provide insights into reasons for encouraging rugby in schools: it trains young men to die courageously for their country and school, according to George Harnett in an article in a Boy's Own annual:

"War, as we know, is the greatest game there is. But we want other most peaceful games, not only to prepare us for the great game of war but also to prepare us physically and morally for the battle of life.

"Rugby football makes men in both quantity and quality, it is men that the Empire needs today (on the battlefields of Europe)."

One wonders if this argument would be supported in the days of professional sport when players are reluctant to go on tour after the events of September 11 in case their lives are threatened.

Whatever your concerns about the rituals of death and burial, Vigor Mortis provides an interesting insight into a real part of life which was once a commonplace experience but, now, is a mystery not experienced by most of us until we are 50-plus.

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* Alan Papprill is Head of English at Otahuhu College.