Notes & Queries Archive
REPLY1850

Combs buried with the Dead

By J. H. P. LERESCHE.

On reference to Sir Thomas Browne's *Hydriotaphia*, I find two passages which may supply the information your correspondent seeks as to the reason for combs being buried with human remains. In section i., pp. 26, 27. (I quote from the Edinburgh reprint of 1822, published by Blackwood) the author says: "In a field of Old Walsingham, not many months past (1658), were digged up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not far from one another, not all strickly of one figure, but most answering these described; some containing two pounds of bones, distingui…

Topics: Burial Customs, Archaeology, Historical Artifacts

Locations: Old Walsingham, Edinburgh