More from the 1500s

We have just received our copy of the latest Crowcombe Village Magazine - it's called CAW which apparently stands for "Crowcombe Area Worksheet", and is distributed in the Parish of Crowcombe. I hope you're all following this, as there will be a test !

One of the articles in the magazine has the same title as this Blog entry - it includes such gems as this:

"England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be," saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer" ".

It's almost plausible, isn't it? Unfortunately this has been sent around the Net as part of Hoax emails for many years - there are some other "gems" which you can see for instance on the Sophos site at http://www.sophos.com/security/hoaxes/life_in_the_1500s.html

OK you say, so it's good that Editors of Parish Magazines have a sense of humour - and I would agree with you. But nowhere can I find anything that owns up to it being a hoax. So maybe these Editors are just gullible ???