Krilof and His Fables/The Funeral

In Egypt, in the olden time, whenever people wanted to bury any one in a very sumptuous style, it was the cus tom to have professional female mourners to wail behind the coffin.

Once upon a time, at a grand funeral, a number of these mourners, uttering loud howls, were escorting home a dead man who had passed from this transitory life to everlasting rest.

Then a stranger, who fancied that in them he saw the whole family of the defunct a prey to unfeigned woe, said to them:

"Tell me, wouldn't you be pleased if I were to bring him to life for you? I am a magician, and so I have the power of doing such things. We keep about us such exorcisms—the corpse will come to life in a moment."

"Father," they all cried out, "pray give us poor creatures that pleasure! There is only one other favour we would ask—that he may die again at the end of four or five days. While he was alive here there was no good at all in him, and there scarcely could be any if he were to live longer. But ​if he were to die, why, then, of course, they would have to hire us to howl for him again."

[Krilof need scarcely have gone all the way to Egypt for is "howlers." Numbers of women earn a comfortable livelihood in Russia as "crieresses," being employed not only at funerals, but also at marriages—for the bride is expected to mourn freely at having to leave her father's home, and pass from the state of "maiden liberty" to that of married subjection, and the "crieress" is invaluable as prompting her with the wailings appropriate to the occasion.]