“Hore lies the child, here lies the father,
     Here lies the sister, here lies the brother,
     Here lie the wife and the husband,
     Yet there are but two bodies here.”

“The tradition is that a son of Madame d’Ecouis had by his mother, without knowing her or being recognised by her, a daughter named Cecilia, whom he afterwards married in Lorraine, she then being in the service of the Duchess of Bar.  Thus Cecilia was at one and the same time her husband’s daughter, sister and wife.  They were interred together in the same grave at Ecouis in 1512.”

According to Millin, a similar tradition will be found with variations in different parts of France.  For instance, at the church of Alincourt, a village between Amiens and Abbeville, there was to be seen in Millin’s time an epitaph running as follows:—­

     “Here lies the son, here lies the mother,
     Here lies the daughter with the father;
     Here lies the sister, here lies the brother,
     Here lie the wife and the husband;
     And there are only three bodies here.”

Gaspard Meturas, it may be added, gives the same epitaph in his Hortus Epitaphiomm Selectorum, issued in 1648, but declares that it is to be found at Clermont in Auvergne—­a long way from Amiens—­and explains it by saying that the mother engendered her husband by intercourse with her own father; whence it follows that he was at the same time her husband, son and brother.—­L.  M. and Ed.

End of vol.  III.

LONDON:  PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY OF ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILISTS