|
So what’s the deal with stones
and coins on top of some graves?
Unless you are
visiting immediately after a periodical Parks Dept. cleanup,
chances are you will see stones and coins placed on graves,
primarily people of renown. So what’s the deal?
From what I have
been able to discover, leaving a stone is a Jewish tradition
called Mitzvah of Matzevah (“setting of stone”) that grew out of
the early funeral tradition that involved the body of the deceased
being buried and each mourner placing a small stone on top to
create a cairn.
The cairn not only marked the grave (particularly
necessary when their Jewish brethren were buried in the desert)
but also protected the mortal remains from hungry animals.
Today that
tradition plays out more in the form of each pebble or stone
being, in essence, a calling card of respect. Paul Revere, Sam
Adams, John Hancock are not Jewish so the tradition has clearly
evolved into a secular one and today is more of an exercise in
mimicking than being in-the-know, with kids generally at the
forefront of the effort.
As to the coins:
When
visiting Ben Franklin’s grave at Christ Church in Philadelphia the
tradition is to leave a penny, presumably due to Ben’s “A penny
saved is a penny earned” advice. If any one person had a tradition
created just to honor them (and then copied) it would be Ben.
Another reason could be the mimicking of the ancient tradition of
placing gold coins with the deceased to pay the toll charged by
Charon, the boatman of the Underworld, for passage to the other
side of the river Styx; reputedly to not do so was to condemn the
deceased to wander the shores for eternity and thus never find
peace.
There is a very slim chance that some place pennies on Paul
Revere’s grave to reflect his work in engraving in copper, most
famously his 1770 Boston Massacre print. In the end I believe that
people mostly place coins, just like the stones, as a form of
good-willed mimicry.
|