Corpse roads provided a practical means for transporting corpses, often from remote communities, to cemeteries that had burial rights, such as parish churches and chapels of ease. In Britain, such routes can also be known by a number of other names, including bier road, burial road, coffin line, coffin road, coffin walk, corpse way, funeral road, lych way, lyke way, and procession way. Such "church-ways" have developed a great deal of associated folklore regarding ghosts, spirits, wraiths, etc.
Origins
In late medieval times a population increase and an expansion of church building took place in Great Britain inevitably encroaching on the territories of existing mother churches or minsters. Demands for autonomy from outlying settlements made minster officials feel that their authority was waning, as were their revenues, so they instituted corpse roads connecting outlying locations and their mother churches (at the heart of parishes) that alone held burial rights. For some parishioners, this decision meant that corpses had to be transported long distances, sometimes through difficult terrain: usually a corpse had to be carried unless the departed was a wealthy individual. An example would be the funeral way that runs from Rydal to Ambleside in the Lake District where a coffin stone, on which the coffin was placed while the parishioners rested, still exists.The Rydal Coffin stone Many of the 'new' churches were eventually granted burial rights and corpse roads ceased to be used as such.
Church-way paths
Many of the corpse roads have long disappeared, while the original purposes of those that still survive as footpaths have been largely forgotten, especially if features such as coffin stones or crosses no longer exist. Fields crossed by church-way paths often had names like "Church-way" or "Kirk-way Field", and today it is sometimes possible to plot the course of some lost church-ways by the sequence of old field names, local knowledge of churches, local legends and lost features of the landscape marked on old maps, etc. One of the oldest superstitions is that any land over which a corpse is carried becomes a public right of way.Waring, Philippa (1978). The Dictionary of Superstitions. Treasure Press. . p. 66.
An example of a corpse road or way is that of the church of St Peter and Paul at Blockley, in Gloucestershire, which held the burial right to the inhabitants of the hamlets Stretton-on-Fosse in Warwickshire, where there was a chapel which became a rectory in the 12th century, and Aston Magna, where there was a chapel which was merely a chantry. All 'tithes' and 'mortuaries', however, came to the parish church of Blockley, to which church the people of Stretton and Aston were committed to carry their deceased for burial. The corpse road from Aston to Blockley churchyard is over two miles (3 km) long and crosses three small streams en route. The corpse road from Stretton to Blockley runs for some four miles (6 km) and crosses two streams.
One of the best preserved coffin walks is in Stawell in Somerset. Although some of the original path is on a private estate, the end of the coffin walk alongside the church of St Francis still links up with a public footpath. This footpath is believed to be the rest of the coffin walk which takes one up to the old Roman Road (A39) between Bridgwater and Street. Many local footpaths to also link up to this old road.
Characteristics of corpse roads
The spirits of the dead The essence of deep-rooted spirit lore is that supposed spirits of one kind or another – spirits of the dead, phantasms of the living, wraiths, or nature entities like fairies move through the physical landscape along special routes. In their ideal, pristine form, at least, such routes are conceived of as being straight, having something in common with ley lines. By the same token, convoluted or non-linear features hinder spirit movement i.e. labyrinths and mazes.
Spirits or ghosts were said to fly along on a direct course close to the ground, so a straight line connecting two places was kept clear of fences, walls, and buildings to avoid obstructing the flitting spectres.Similar traditions of spirits only moving in straight lines exist elsewhere – the aling-aling found in Bali are a wall directly inside a door, which keep spirits (hyang) out because they only move in straight lines. See Bali Religion . The paths would run in a straight line over mountains and valleys and through marshes. In towns, they would pass the houses closely or go right through them. The paths end or originate at a cemetery; therefore, such a path or road was believed to have the same characteristics as a cemetery, where spirits of the deceased thrive.
The corpse roads or ways were left unploughed and it was considered very bad luck if for any reason a different route had to be taken.
Corpse candles and other related phenomena
A corpse candle or light is a flame or ball of light, often blue, that is seen to travel just above the ground on the route from the cemetery to the dying person's house and back again, and is particularly associated with Wales.Pennick, Nigel (1996). Celtic Sacred Landscapes. Thames & Hudson. . p. 145. A corpse fire is very similar as the name comes from lights appearing specifically within graveyards where it was believed the lights were an omen of death or coming tragedy and would mark the route of a future funeral, from the victim's house to the graveyard, where it would vanish into the ground at the site of the burial. The appearance was often said to be on the night before a death.Roud, Steven (2003) The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. Penguin Books. London. p. 113.
Among European rural people, especially in Gaelic, Slavic, and Germanic folklore, the will-o'-the-wisps are held to be mischievous spirits of the dead or other supernatural beings attempting to lead travellers astrayWill-o'-the-Wisp – The Lantern Man, Feu Follet, Ignis Fatuus (compare Puck). Sometimes they are believed to be the spirits of unbaptized or stillborn children, flitting between heaven and hell. Other names are Jack O' Lantern, or Joan of the Wad, Jenny Burn-tail, Kitty wi' the Whisp, or Spunkie.Clarke, D. "Lights in the sky." Country Life Magazine 19 April 1990: 188–189.
Anybody seeing this phenomenon might merely have been seeing, without knowing, fungal bioluminescence (foxfire). It is also possible those who have observed corpse candles may have been witnessing the effect of methane gases produced by decomposing organic material found in swamps, marshlands, and bogs.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck says:
Puck suggests a secret history of these routes, for unsurprisingly they attracted long extant folk lore, running not only through the physical countryside but also through the invisible geography, the 'mental terrain', of pre-industrial country-folk. Shakespeare's lines leave little doubt that the physical corpse roads came to be perceived as being spirit routes, taking on qualities which lingered in the folklore of his age and which he incorporated into his play knowing that it would be a familiar concept.
Spirit roads and archaeological features
The spirit roads, such as the church-ways, were always conceived of as being straight, but the physical corpse roads of the United Kingdom vary as much as any other path. Corpses were conveyed along defined corpse roads to avoid their spirits returning to haunt the living. It was a widespread custom, for example, that the feet of the corpse be kept pointing away from the family home on its journey to the cemetery. Other minor ritualistic means of preventing the return of the dead person included ensuring that the route the corpse took to burial would take it over bridges or stepping stones across running water which spirits could not cross, stiles, and various other 'liminal' ("betwixt and between") locations, all of which had reputations for preventing or hindering the free passage of spirits. The living took pains to prevent the dead from wandering the land as lost souls or animated corpses, for the belief in revenants (ghosts) was widespread in mediæval Europe.
People using the corpse roads assumed that they could be passages for ghosts. The ancient spirit folklore that attached itself to the medieval and later corpse roads also may have informed certain prehistoric features. In Britain, for instance, Neolithic earthen avenues called cursuses link burial mounds: these features can run for considerable distances, even miles, and are largely straight, or straight in segments, connecting funerary sites. The purpose of these avenues is imperfectly understood, but some kind of spirit-way function may be one reasonable explanation. Similarly, some Neolithic and Bronze Age graves, especially in France and Britain, are associated with stone rows, like those at Merrivale on Dartmoor, with intriguing blocking stones at their ends.Where the Leylines led
Homer Sykes in Mysterious Britain says that the 'holed' Cornish 'Tolvan' stone was used to block a now lost ancient burial chamber, and suggests that the hole allowed a way in for funeral purposes and a passage out for the spirits of the dead.Sykes, Homer (1993). Mysterious Britain. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
In Britain, around 4000–6000 years old, bog causeways constructed from timber have been excavated. The "Sweet Track" in Somerset, is one of the oldest and the excavations along this old straight track indicated that one of its uses was for transporting the dead.Ley Lines
Associated legends and beliefs Some country-folk claim that if a dead body is carried across a field it will thereafter fail to produce good crop yields. Throughout the United Kingdom and Europe it is still believed that touching a corpse in the coffin will allow the departed spirit to go in peace to its rest, and bring good luck to the living.Waring, Philippa (1978). The Dictionary of Superstitions. Treasure Press. . p. 67.
Phantom lights are sometimes seen on the Scottish cemetery-island of Mun in Loch Leven and traditionally such lights were thought to be omens of impending death; the soul also was thought to depart the body in the form of a flame or light.
In Ireland, the féar gortach ("hungry grass"/"violent hunger") is said to grow at a place where an unenclosed corpse was laid on its way to burial. This is thought to be a permanent effect and anyone who stands on such grass is said to develop insatiable hunger. One such place is in Ballinamore and was so notorious that the woman of the nearby house kept a supply of food on hand for victims.Pennick, Nigel (1996). Celtic Sacred Landscapes. Thames & Hudson. . p. 134.
On Aranmore Island off Ireland each passing funeral would stop and erect a memorial pile of stones on the smooth rocky surface on the roadside enclosure.Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (1911). The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries. Reprinted. Colin Smythe (1981). . pp. 40–41.
The existence of specific coffin stones, crosses or lychgates on church-ways, suggests that these may have been specially positioned and sanctified so as to allow the coffin to be placed there temporarily without the chance of the ground becoming in some way tainted or the spirit given an opportunity to escape and haunt its place of death.