I’m wondering what some of the funniest or most absurd epitaphs every written are. I’m not looking for hypothetical or fictional, rather I’m talking about epitaphs that are/were really carved into people’s gravestones (at least, maybe, requested in their wills)…
Spike Milligan’s reads Duirt me leat go raibh me breoite - ‘I told you I was ill’. You can just about make it out here, 4th line from the bottom.
There have been several books on this kind of thing, and I know I’ve been to plenty of websites – search engines are your friends – but I suspect a lot of these are spurious, and shoukld be taken with a grain of salt. In particular, the favorite from the Old West:
Lester Moore
Four Slugs from a 44
No Les
No Moore
Has been debunked. Right here on this Board, if memory serves. (Among other things,. no contemporary 19th century doggerel would have sais “Four Slugs”.)
I have a collection of old Ripley’s Believe it or Not cartoons on weird tombstones, and I’ve noticed that he often did more than one cartoon on the same tombstone. Sometimes highly detailed sketches. The trouble is, they looked completely different, which suggestes that he (or the artist doing it in his name) hadn’t seen the tomb, and was going by a report. Which doesn’t give me a great deal of faith in the account. Nevertheless, admitting that these may all be false, here are some of the ones I’ve liked (from memory):
In Memory of Ellen Shann
Aged 26
Fatally Burned by the Explosion of a Lamp
Filled with Danforth’s Non-Explosive Fluid
Here Beneath this Stone we Lie
Back to Babk, My Wife and I
And When the Angels’ Trump Shall Trill
If She Gets Up, Then I’ll Lie Still
Lee
Lee
(In Lee County, Miss., no less)
John Yeast
– Pardon Me For Not Rising
I Told You I Was Sick
(Name)
P.S. – The Old Nuisance
{Name)
Fell to Earth (Birth date)
Had the Dust Brushed Off Him
(Date of Death)
Here lies the Body of John Higgs
A Famous Man for Killing Pigs
For Killing Pigs was His Delight
Morning, Afternoon, and Night.
Molly Ivins reports a Texas legislator, Ben Atwill, who was told that "No one ever has “author of a tax bill” put on his tombstone, to which Atwell replied, “I will”. He did – his Texas-shaped tombstone reads “Lawyer - Legislator - Author of a Tax Bil”
http://www.texnews.com/1998/texas/atw0701.htmll
My all-time favorite is the diagram showing his contribution to the science of mechanics. I don’t know if the story is true or apocryphal, but I’d like a tombstone like that. Maybe I can get my patent numbers inscribed, or something
For John Laird McCaffrey, who obviously had trouble making friends.
JOHN,
FREE YOUR BODY AND SOUL
UNFOLD YOUR POWERFUL WINGS
CLIMB UP THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINS
KICK YOUR FEET UP IN THE AIR
YOU MAY NOW LIVE FOREVER
OR RETURN TO THIS EARTH
UNLESS YOU FEEL GOOD WHERE YOU ARE!
MISSED BY YOUR FRIENDS
If you don’t get it, it’s an acrostic poem. Check it out.
Here’s a picture.
There is a tombstone near my husbands grandparents that is one of the neatest I’ve ever seen. It’s an upside down u shape with a bell in the middle. It was a teenager who’s last name was bell. It has the phrase “every time a bell rings and angel gets its’ wings.”
On the two legs are the first names of all the people he was an organ donor for, with the body part used. There has to be at least 60 people on there.
For the parents to lose a teenage son and still be able to let him be an organ donor (by his choice or theirs) I would have to image is pretty difficult, however, looking at the long list of people he helped is really sobering.
Who says all teenagers are useless? Who says one person can’t make a difference?
Be an organ donor.
It has been? This is fake? I’ll be damned.
The more you know!
Great. Now I can’t find any references to the debunking on the 'net or on the SDMB (though I notuice we both posted about this epitaph about a year ago, and back in 2000).
Here at least is a comment by someone else who’s heard the same things I have.
(near bottom of the page)
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-29713.html
OK, since we’ve went there, this is not real, but is nevertheless my favorite:
Here lies the body of Jackson Browne
Lost at sea Nev’r found.
P.S.
I want mine to be:
Here lies the body of LiveOnAPlane
Augered In
Just West of Maine
I remember reading that in the cemetery by Yale, two chemists who had been faculty members and “friendly” rivals were buried side by side. The one who died first’s family had every faculty position and honor he’d ever achieved inscribed from the days of his post-doc work. The adjacent guy, who died a little later, had his family take an implicit dig at the colleague’s protesting-too-much epitaph by engraving simply “Joe Dokes, Nobel Laureate, Etc.” Needless to say, the predeceasing colleague had never attained that honor.
Kind of jerk-like, actually.
There is another “I Told You I Was Sick” epitaph in the Key West cemetery. That cemetery also sports a grave reading “Devoted Fan of Julio Iglesias” but sadly I cannot find a picture of that one online.
I’ve always been a fan of:
Norton I
Emperor of the United States
And
Protector of Mexico
as seen here.
Here lies the body of Jane Smith, wife of Thomas Smith, Marble Cutter. This headstone is erected as a monument to her memory and a specimen of his work. Monuments in the same style $500.
Here Lies
Ezekiel Aikle
Aged 104
The Good
Die Young
(Si non è vero, è bene trovato … )
His grave stone has his most famous equation (S=k logW) - scroll down in the Wikipedia page for a picture.
Here lies I and my two daughters,
Killed by drinking Cheltenham waters;
If we had stuck to Epsom salts,
We shouldn’t be lying in these here vaults.
Sorry, but that one is for real. It’s in Boot Hill, Tombstone AZ. I’ve seen it. Here’s the entry on FindAGrave
There is indeed a tombstone there with that carved on it. The consensus is that it’s a much later forgery.