And speaking of churchyards, many of us have loved the lines of Gray's "Elegy." Walk around to the porch of the church, and look at its simple loveliness, and you will be seeing a detail executed in the style of the porch of Stoke-Poges Church, which Gray immortalized.

On Wooster Pike, at the entrance to the cemetery drive, is the Lych-Gate, or Lich-Gate, as it is sometimes spelled. In ancient churchyards, the Lych-Gate stood at the entrance to the consecrated ground, and draws its name from the Anglo-Saxon word for corpse: "lic." A roof covered it, so as to give shelter to the bearers of the body, while they were waiting for the priest to begin the introductory words of the burial office. In the center there was usually a stone slab on which the coffin was rested, and often there were stone seats as well. When the deceased was a malefactor, particularly a murderer or a suicide, or anyone who would be denied burial in a consecrated ground, the service was said under shelter of the gate, and the body then removed for burial at the cross-roads. The word is pronounced as if spelled "litch."