The living paths of the dead

Rydal, Lake District The trees watch stiffly, the path a tunnel through their motionless squabble of branches, bare as picked bones. Coffins passed this way, for burial in consecrated ground in Grasmere.

Winter on a fellside path, just a path between here and there. But there seems to be a disagreement in terms with this path, and those like it: the method of conveyance, or the thing being conveyed. Coffin Trail, or Corpse Road.

Dread names spread branch-like from these old pathways, through folklore and onto maps. Church ways, bier paths, spirit lines, ghost walks. They eulogise an old passage: along corpse roads, the living carried the dead.

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