Rain at a funeral
Rain at a funeral was read as a good sign in old British sayings: happy is the one the rain falls on. The belief did something kind for mourners, and it shows how much a well-chosen word of comfort can carry.
What it may mean
Nobody chooses funeral weather, and on a hard day rain can feel like one more burden: wet shoes at the graveside, umbrellas bumping. Old sayings turned it around. "Happy is the corpse that the rain falls on" was common enough that George Eliot put it in a character's mouth, and a Scottish rhyme asked for soft rain on the corpse's road home. In North Wales, rain on the way to church was the dew of heaven on the bier. These sayings did a kind thing: they handed grieving people a reason to see a hard detail as a good sign. That is often what comfort looks like: a small story offered at the right moment. Whatever you believe, a rainy funeral may leave you weighing the words people find for each other in grief, and which of them help.
Depending on how you saw it
Rain during the burial itself
At a wet graveside, umbrellas end up held over the family by friends and sometimes by strangers from the funeral home. Nobody asks; it simply happens. Who held something over you, in rain or in any other way, when you needed it?
Sun breaking through at the end
When the Duke of Wellington died, a 1903 collection says, rain poured until his burial and the sun came out the moment he was buried, giving rise to the saying that the rain would not stop till the Duke was buried. People like to read the sky on days that matter. Do you find yourself reading the weather on important days?
A storm that keeps the crowd small
Bad weather can thin a funeral down to the people who would have come through anything. The gathering becomes smaller and closer. Which small gathering in your life mattered more to you than a large one?
Why it happens in nature
Funerals are held within days or weeks of a death, so the weather is simply whatever the season brings. In damp climates such as Britain and Ireland, where many of these sayings were recorded, rain falls on a large share of days, so a wet funeral was a common experience.
What folk beliefs say
North Wales
In North Wales, Pennant's manuscript noted, rain falling while a body was carried to church was taken to bode well for the dead person, whose bier was wet with the dew of heaven.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 2 (1849), vol. 2, p. 285. View the page
Scotland
An old Scottish rhyme on the best weather for life's great days asks for "gentle rain to the corpse carried to its lang hame."
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 1035. View the page
England (George Eliot)
The saying "happy is the corpse that the rain falls on" appears in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede, where a character regrets that a man was not buried in the forenoon while the rain was falling.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 973. View the page
To reflect on
Which words of comfort have helped you most in a time of loss, even if they were not strictly true?